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

An important look into many nuances surrounding the electrical infrastructure in the US. This book covers topics as diverse as the history of our infrastructure, clean energy, what utility providers actually do, technologies that are helping to localize the grid, and more.

However, I can't take a book seriously when the author cannot present basic facts about electricity correctly. This book is in serious need of an electrical engineer to act as editor. The author states that electrons disappear when power is turned off, that generators work by ripping electrons from their atoms, and other completely incorrect statements. I'm sure that a lot of research went into this book. However, I had a lot of doubt about the veracity of the show more information in this book based on the fact that the author apparently has no idea how electricity works. show less

The electrical grid is something so pervasive and ubiquitous so as to not even be noticed anymore. It is only noticed when it fails or if you are fortunate enough to go to a different country and have to deal with different outlets. Bakke spends time going through the specific history and fragility of the American electric grid and how vulnerable it can be even though we all greatly depend on its continued existence. She provides lots of great real-world examples and interviews with people from all aspects of the electrical system. My only complaint with this book was how dated it already feels. FERC vs. ERSA has been decided upholding demand response and Tesla has been innovating and deploying new technologies faster than people can show more keep up. Still, its an interesting read about the challenges that face our electric system and some opportunities to vastly improve the system at all levels.

NB: also the author adds a lot of interesting additional details in the Notes/References which are worth checking out if you enjoyed the rest of the book. show less

Interesting topic and made me realize how little I know about something so basic. However, the two faults were that it didn't go into enough detail on technical aspects and that the author tried a bit too hard to write nice prose, which just resulted in too many adjectives and repeating the same way five times in hopes of coming up with a good and clever turn of phrase. Often there was an analogy I would like and three that were not interesting or useful...I suppose others might have felt the same way but with a different one of the options so that there was something for everyone, but just made the book long and made it harder to go into the detail I thought was missing. Ultimately, felt more like 3.5 stars, but I didn't want to punish show more the rating in part because I was so slow in finishing. show less

A lot more fun than you might imagine a book about electricity to be, and at least as important. Plenty of surprises and some chuckles.

The author chooses a very arcane topic and manages to put across very lucidly the challenges etc. faced by the electricity grid in modern times.

The book was informative and eye-opening. However, the author has a very repetitive style of writing and ends up saying the same thing over and over again. Almost all the chapters thus look and read similarly. Not a great read.

An entertaining high-level view of the hugely complex power network, focusing on its fragility and the need for a more reliable, decentralized architecture.

Билл Гейтс особо отметил эту книгу в своем ежегодном списке лучшей литературы. Кому, как не ему, знать, что компьютер всего лишь инструмент, а работает именно электричество. За привычными нам проводами и мачтами ЛЭП скрывается огромное хозяйство, величайшее достижение инженерной мысли ХХ века, о сложности и интересности которого мы, как правило, не догадываемся. Так, например, оказывается, что переход на show more альтернативные источники энергии невозможен без серьезного пересмотра существующих электросетей: чем больше инвестиций идет в «зеленую» энергетику, тем более хрупкими становятся сети. Рассчитанные на предсказуемую подачу тока из генерирующих станций, они мало пригодны к скачкообразным «вбросам» от солнечных панелей и ветряков. В отсутствие технологии хранения энергии ответом может стать использование аккумуляторов электромобилей, которые «работают» лишь несколько часов в день. Однако электроэнергия — не только работа, но и информация: анализируя ваше потребление, компании могут делать выводы о том, чем вы занимаетесь дома. show less