From the Bookshelf of Not Exceeding Ten Miles Square…

The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future

Gretchen Bakke

Start date: October 4, 2023

Finish date: December 6, 2023

Why we're reading this: Electricity!
[close] Electricity!

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Nov 25, 2023 DW Rowlands rated it really liked it

Shelves: topic-sci-economics, category-pop-nonfic, topic-hist-technology, recs-urban-book-club, topic-sci-environment

(Sorry for the weird tagging of this book: I'm reading it for an urbanism book club, but it's not actually about cities and I struggled to figure out where or how I could plausibly classify it in my existing topic categories. Strangely, I don't actually have an "infrastructure" one, though maybe I should.)

I found this book quite interesting and informative overall, but the fact that it's now seven years out-of-date (it was published in 2016) is definitely a problem in what's a fairly fast-changi (Sorry for the weird tagging of this book: I'm reading it for an urbanism book club, but it's not actually about cities and I struggled to figure out where or how I could plausibly classify it in my existing topic categories. Strangely, I don't actually have an "infrastructure" one, though maybe I should.)

I found this book quite interesting and informative overall, but the fact that it's now seven years out-of-date (it was published in 2016) is definitely a problem in what's a fairly fast-changing field like renewable energy and the power grid. That said, the first several chapters, which focus on the history of how we ended up with a power grid, despite the fact that the economics and technical limitations of early DC electric power initially led to electricity primarily being used for small, private installations.

The second half of the book focused on the rise of renewable energy and how it—and especially small-scale renewable energy, such as rooftop solar—strain the power grid. In particular, Gretchen Bakke raises an issue that I hadn't considered, which is that renewable energy, which tends to be more intermittent and unpredictable (wind blowing and sun shining aren't continuous, and depend on weather), puts more of a strain on the grid and requires more long-distance transmission lines to allow load-balancing, just as it often takes revenue away from the utilities responsible for maintaining and building those lines. Bakke more generally argues that under-investment in the power grid is an increasing problem in the US, and repeatedly claims that the rate of power outages has gone up by an order of magnitude over the past several decades. (I would like to see a citation and explanation for this, because the change is so large that I'm suspicious it's partly due to better reporting of grid reliability than we had in the past.) There is a also a lot of discussion of renewable power infrastructure, particularly batteries and rooftop storage, that I think is largely out-of-date. ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Dec 06, 2023 ambyr rated it liked it

Shelves: authorㅡfemale, genreㅡnonfiction, acquiredㅡfrom-work

Dec 05, 2023 Forestofglory rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, planning

Sep 12, 2017 Ellery marked it as to-read

Nov 22, 2023 kelly rated it liked it · review of another edition

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