The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World , Phillip F. Schewe , Joseph Henry Press, Washington, DC , 2007. $27.95 (311 pp.). ISBN 978-0-309-10260-5
Electricity uniquely combines three attributes: It is crucial, even for minimally developed societies; fragile, in that prohibitive storage costs require production to equal use by the minute; and interconnected, because failure of one supplier to meet demand can black out half a continent. In The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World, Phillip Schewe, chief science writer at the American Institute of Physics, admirably and accessibly portrays each of those attributes. Specialists and general audiences should find the book entertaining, despite its occasionally distracting literary devices and flourishes.
After some introduction, Schewe’s tale begins in 1882 with the first grid, powered by Thomas Edison’s DC generator at the Pearl Street station in New York City’s lower Manhattan. Edison’s company eventually lost out to George Westinghouse’s AC system, which could transmit power over longer distances by relying on transformers and the AC generators and motors designed by Edison’s former employee, Nikola Tesla. The story fascinatingly turns to another former Edison employee, the now largely forgotten Samuel Insull, who created the regulated utility system that dominated the 20th century. Schewe describes the growth of the grid in Vladimir Lenin’s Russia and in Franklin Roosevelt’s US, with particular focus on the Tennessee Valley Authority. Ironically, in attempting to contrast the developments in Russia and the US, he shows the unintended similarities between centrally planned power and publicly regulated and funded utilities.
The most dramatic story comes next: the 1965 Northeast blackout. To tell the tale, Schewe melds stories from the streets of New York City and the utility control rooms. The power failure forced industry and government to pay attention to reliability, just as fuel prices started rising, environmental issues gained traction, and competition began intruding into Insull’s regulated monopoly legacy. The 2001 California energy debacle of rolling blackouts and utility bankruptcies is briefly covered; unfortunately, the author focuses more on Enron Corp rather than on California’s idiosyncratic regulatory policy as the culprit. Schewe then turns to alternatives to giant, fossil-fuel plants, with a fair look at the benefits and problems of solar, wind, and nuclear power. After describing a fascinating transformer-repair field trip with Idaho Power, one of the high points in the book, the author concludes with observations on electrification in developing countries and on the similarities between the Apollo moon landings and the massive “Big Allis” generator that provides power to New York City as large-scale technological missions.
If readers drawn to The Grid want to learn more about whether competition has led to improved performance or just higher prices or about global warming and conservation tips, they will likely be disappointed. Technical and policy experts may want more detail: For example, nowhere in the book can readers find an intuitive explanation of “reactive power.” However, those shortcomings ironically illuminate the book’s strength—the focus on what it takes to get this amazing, pervasive system to work at all.
One important minor flaw, likely from a tight publication budget, is the absence of graphics. The text lacks even the standard “generator transmission distribution user” diagram provided in almost every other book about electricity. A map and timeline of the 1965 blackout would help keep the story straight, and power-pool maps would show how grids go beyond boundaries of not just individual power companies but also states and countries. Photographs would also help attract a general audience. I confess to wondering what this Insull looked like.
The author may be more to blame for the book’s peculiar organization. We don’t find out how the grid works until the penultimate chapter, and the reader won’t learn about kilowatt-hours, the unit of energy most homeowners actually buy every month, until the final chapter. Insull falls from grace in chapter 3, but we don’t learn what happens to him until the end of chapter 4. Florid musings on the downside of technology are liberally dropped throughout the text graced with selected quotes from Henry Adams and Henry David Thoreau. Conservation is important, especially in the midst of global warming, but the book would be stronger if that topic were left to the end rather than inserted here and there.
Schewe’s baroque flourishes, Waldenesque contemplation, and nonlinear organization suggest that he doubts that readers share his fascination, and mine, with electricity. The assumption is understandable. When I tell acquaintances that I work on electricity economics, “boredom squared” is in their eyes. And I bet when Schewe told fellow dinner-party guests that he was working on a book on electricity, it probably took milliseconds for someone to interrupt with “Anyone seen a good movie lately?” Much of The Grid might offer promising material for Hollywood producers. I hope Schewe, also a dramatist, is working on screenplays for the 1965 New York City blackout miniseries and the Insull biopic. Those stories would be worth seeing.
