The blackout of 2003 illuminated just how dependent America is on electricity. It was not just that some 50 million people in eight states and Ontario were cut off from their televisions, microwaves, ATMs, and email. Without the electrical juice to keep their sockets alive, factory managers were forced to close production lines, city managers shut down water deliveries, grocery store clerks watched their frozen inventory slowly melt away. Economists estimated that the blackout cost Americans $5 billion even as energy analysts were predicting that a similar blackout could happen again. The catastrophe forced us to marvel at the unusual ability of sub-microscopic particles to move like waves inside a wire and cause bulbs to glow. It highlighted the complex requirements for managing the massive generators, transformers, transmission lines, and switch boxes needed to tap and deliver flowing electrons. It encouraged us to recognize the profound impact of electricity on all aspects of commerce and culture.

Such events as the blackout, the Enron debacle, and the California brownouts also reveal the cracks in a 100-year-old industry structure that have been building ever since Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and their contemporaries first managed to harness electricity and make it available to the masses, and tycoons, such as Sam Insull and George Norris, began to concentrate financial control and political influence. "From Edison to Enron" traces the controversial history of this $210 billion industry--the nation's largest--showcasing the key individuals, technological innovations, corporate machinations, and political battles that have been waged over its domination. Munson maintains that today's technological and regulatory infrastructure, as a function of its history, is a relic that has long outlived its usefulness; he points out that two-thirds of the fuel burned to generate electricity is lost, that Americans pay roughly $100 billion too much each year for heat and power, and that environmentally unfriendly generators are the nation's largest polluters. Meanwhile, innovations in technology and business models are being blocked by entrenched monopolies. Ultimately, Munson argues that current policies and practices, including those favored by the Bush Administration, are preventing entrepreneurs from producing more efficient, healthy, and sustainable power supplies. Moreover, he presents an agenda for business and policy reforms that will stimulate economic development in the United States and around the world.

The blackout of 2003 illuminated just how dependent America is on electricity. It was not just that some 50 million people in eight states and Ontario were cut off from their televisions, microwaves, ATMs, and email. Without the electrical juice to keep their sockets alive, factory managers were forced to close production lines, city managers shut down water deliveries, grocery store clerks watched their frozen inventory slowly melt away. Economists estimated that the blackout cost Americans $5 billion even as energy analysts were predicting that a similar blackout could happen again. The catastrophe forced us to marvel at the unusual ability of sub-microscopic particles to move like waves inside a wire and cause bulbs to glow. It highlighted the complex requirements for managing the massive generators, transformers, transmission lines, and switch boxes needed to tap and deliver flowing electrons. It encouraged us to recognize the profound impact of electricity on all aspects of commerce and culture. Such events as the blackout, the Enron debacle, and the California "brownouts" also reveal the cracks in a 100-year-old industry structure that have been building ever since Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and their contemporaries first managed to harness electricity and make it available to the masses, and tycoons, such as Sam Insull and George Norris, began to concentrate financial control and political influence. From Edison to Enron traces the controversial history of this $210 billion industry--the nation's largest--showcasing the key individuals, technological innovations, corporate machinations, and political battles that have been waged over its domination. Munson maintains thattoday's technological and regulatory infrastructure, as a function of its history, is a relic that has long outlived its usefulness; he points out that two-thirds of the fuel burned to generate electricity is lost, that Americans pay roughly $100 billion too much each year for heat and power, and that environmentally unfriendly generators are the nation's largest polluters. Meanwhile, innovations in technology and business models are being blocked by entrenched monopolies. Ultimately, Munson argues that current policies and practices, including those favored by the Bush Administration, are preventing entrepreneurs from producing more efficient, healthy, and sustainable power supplies. Moreover, he presents an agenda for business and policy reforms that will stimulate economic development in the United States and around the world.

After improving steadily for decades, the technology that brought unequalled productivity growth to the American electric utility industry appeared to stall in the late 1960s, making it impossible to mitigate the difficult economic and regulatory assaults of the 1970s. Unfortunately, most managers did not recognize the severity of the technological problems they faced and chose to focus instead on issues that appeared more manageable. Partly as a result of this lack of attention to technological issues, the industry found itself challenged by the prospects of deregulation and restructuring in the 1980s. This book focuses on the role of technological stagnation in the decline of the industry and argues that a long and successful history of managing a conventional technology set the stage for the industry's deterioration.

'Review of Electricity Supply and Demand in Southeast Europe' is part of the World Bank Working Paper series. These papers are published to communicate the results of the Bank's ongoing research and to stimulate public discussion. This paper reviews the power sector demand-supply balance in Southeastern Europe, covering Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia and Montenegro (including Kosovo), and identifies the magnitude of generation investments needed in this evolving market. It proposes mechanisms to reduce investment requirements, namely energy efficiency improvements and increased trade, and provides a brief assessment of technical and institutional barriers to trade.

In many developing countries, both governments and investors have expressed disappointment with the performance of recently privatized electricity distribution companies. Some investors claim that the design of the new regulatory system is fundamentally flawed and recommend that independent regulatory commissions be replaced or supplemented by more explicit "regulation by contract" that would reduce the discretion of new commissions. This paper examines whether regulation by contract or a combination of regulation by contract and regulatory independence would provide a better regulatory system for developing and transition economy countries that wish to privatize distribution systems.

Elihu Thomson was a major American inventor of electric light and power systems. A contemporary of Thomas Edison, Thomson performed the engineering and design work necessary to make electric lighting a common product. From the 1880s to the 1930s, Thomson was employed by the General Electric Company and its predecessors. Working within the corporation, Thomson reveals how successful inventions are based on explicit links among technological artifacts, marketing strategy, and the business organization needed for manufacturing and marketing.

Consume thy rival may be the new law of corporate survival in the U.S. utilities industry. This book describes close to $70 billion of global utility mergers stemming from the anticipated deregulation of the U.S. gas and electrical utilities industries. Occurring from 1995 to 1997, these mergers are completely restructuring U.S. power utilities. Thirty-seven billion dollars of these mergers, a full 53 percent, occurred abroad. About two-thirds of the foreign mergers were U.S. takeovers, while the remaining one-third was mergers, defensive and otherwise, of U.K. firms with other U.K. firms. This may be the first time U.S. industrial restructuring has generated more investment abroad rather than in domestic markets.

Exploring the diversity of strategies and changes driving these mergers, the author concludes that although complex, the mergers can be explained by strategies traditionally used in domestic M&As. These very large U.S. utilities now consider themselves to be operating in a global industry of private, deregulated utilities, and they are determined to survive through mergers that help them cut costs, spread expenses, and increase profits.

The electricity generation and supply industry is undergoing rapid changes in the 1990s. As demands for economic power continue to increase, governments throughout Europe are contemplating a reformation of electricity policy for the 21st century. This book discusses the current state of the European electricity generation and supply industry and the options for improvement in the future.

Written by renowned experts in the field of energy policy and economics, the book includes detailed case studies of national electricity regulation from around Europe, and a timely overview of European Union electricity policy on liberalisation and deregulation.
Given that the changes to the European electricity industries will provide valuable pointers to change in other areas, this book is essential reading for industry analysts, policy makers, utility companies and others with an interest in the future of energy generation and transmission worldwide.

Sridharan provides an interpretative comparison of the political economy of policy and development of a new industry--electronics--in three major developing countries --India, Brazil, and Korea--over a quarter of a century. Electronics, defined to encompass the entire microelectronics-based complex of industries, is the epitome of a new industry for developing countries. Promoting it involves all the dilemmas of industrial policy for developing countries: state versus market, multinations versus domestic firms, imported versus indigenous development of technology, import-substitution versus export-orientation, and so forth.

India, Brazil, and Korea are three of the developing world's technological leaders and largest industrial producers. All began to systematically promote a local electronics industry in the late 1960s. Different strategies were chosen, different trajectories followed, and different outcomes resulted. Sridharan interprets this experience in comparative perspective in the light of the concept of strategic capacity (of developing countries to effect industrialization), refining and further augmenting it to advance the theoretical debate on the political economy of industrialization. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars, researchers, and policy makers involved with industrial development and public policy.

The electric power sector operates under an archaic regulatory system that is ill-equipped to oversee a competitive, restructured, regionally-organized industry. This book offers the first systematic discourse on regional aspects of regulatory reform, sharing topical perspectives from leading actors and regional case studies that show how the debate plays out on the ground. It frames the policy debate, applies economic and political theoretical lenses to federalism issues, and outlines options for regulatory reform, modes of cooperation, and an analytical basis for decisions. Most important, it provides a strategic road map for the industry over the coming decade. Contributors include current and former regulators at the State and Federal levels, senior utility executives, leading advocates, government policy makers and academics, including Michael Danielson, Michehl Gent, Kenneth Gordon, Kevin Kelly, Raymond Maliszewski, Richard O'Neill, Jackie Pfannensteil, Mary Sharpe Hayes, Charles Stalon, and many others.

Competition in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity is of increasing interest to policy makers as well as to buyers and sellers of power. The use of competition as a social policy tool to benefit consumers carries the necessity of preserving competition when it is threatened by mergers or other structural changes. The work explains central principles of antitrust economics and applies them to mergers in the electric power industry. This work focuses on mergers, but the economic principles explained here will be useful in analyzing many important issues flowing from growth of competition in electric power. For example, proper definition of markets and analysis of market power will be useful in decisions on whether to continue regulation.

For most of us, life is spent in one vast electromagnetic field. In the office we sit in front of computer terminals, at home, in front of the television. We cook our meals in microwave ovens, trim our hedges with electric shears, illuminate our houses, workplaces, and streets with incandescent and fluorescent lighting. And until only recently, the potential hazards imposed by life in the shadows of high-voltage power lines have hardly been considered. First published in 1973, Power Over People was the first book to address the frightening potential side effects of our dependence on electrical energy. Now brought up to date with a new introduction, and including an epilogue that offers the most current studies and findings available today, this classic book is more timely than ever. Louise Young here lays bare the short-sighted, materialistic policies of the electric power industry, showing how power and the conglomerates that produce it have clearly won out over rights and safety concerns of people. She provides disturbing documentary evidence that demonstrates how long-term exposure to radiation from power lines can cause brain cancer, childhood leukemia, as well as damage to the nervous system. Through the course of the book we come to understand that what is often blindly accepted as "progress" can mean the inexorable advance of environmental destruction and the withering-rather than enhancing-of the quality of life in America. Based on a case-study of a small, rural community in Ohio, Young shows in compelling fashion what happens when a grass-roots group of concerned citizens resists the construction of the world's largest electrical transmission towers, literally in their own backyards. Her story of their ultimate failure becomes a stinging indictment of indifferent government agencies and the lax laws that fail to protect the environment. Lively, readable, and, at times, even shocking, this is a book for environmentally-minded and safety-conscious readers of the 1990s. Its wealth of information, its incisive analysis, and its bold confrontation of facts we can no longer afford to ignore make Power Over People a book everyone should read and reflect upon.

The unprecedented financial pressures facing today's electric utilities have encouraged the evolution of conservation as a planning strategy. Electric Utility Conservation Programs is the first book to isolate the problems electric utilities encounter and document the solutions they are finding throughout the design, operation, marketing, and evaluation stages of their conservation programs. Including coverage of customer acceptance of their programs and how they can be monitored, this new work is a practical guide for anyone connected with electrical utilities, such as regulatory agencies, researchers, policymakers, and strategists. Topics include: energy conservation, electric utility conservation programs, demand-side planning, demand-side management, and energy utilization.

The Chinese electricity sector is the largest in the world, covering well over 20% of the world's electricity supply. While many other countries liberalized their electricity systems in the 1990s, thereby creating competitive wholesale and retail electricity markets, China's move towards liberalization has advanced at a slower pace - until now. Following the China State Council's publication of the No. 9 document on 'Deepening Reform of the Power Sector', this book reflects on the ambitious new round of reforms aimed at introducing competitive wholesale electricity markets and incentive regulation for its power grids. Written in collaboration with Hao Chen, Lewis Dale and Chung-Han Yang, this book provides lessons for China's reforms from international experience, combining a detailed review of reforms from around the world with specific application to China and focuses on how the industrial price of electricity is determined in a liberalized power system.

This open access book discusses the eroding economics of nuclear power for electricity generation as well as technical, legal, and political acceptance issues. The use of nuclear power for electricity generation is still a heavily disputed issue. Aside from technical risks, safety issues, and the unsolved problem of nuclear waste disposal, the economic performance is currently a major barrier. In recent years, the costs have skyrocketed especially in the European countries and North America. At the same time, the costs of alternatives such as photovoltaics and wind power have significantly decreased.

The 2016 Electricity Profiles contains electricity profiles for about 230 countries and territories, providing detailed information on production, trade and consumption of electricity, net installed capacity and thermal power plant input and efficiency for most countries, on an internationally comparable basis. It is published by the United Nations Statistics Division with the aim of providing an overall picture of the electricity sector of such countries and areas. Electricity production and electric installed capacity are disaggregated by source, as coming from Combustible fuels, Hydro, Nuclear and Other sources; and by type of producer, whether from main activity producers or autoproducers.

Innovation is key to achieving a sustainable electricity system. New technologies and organizational changes can bring about more sustainable, climate-friendly electricity structures. Yet the dynamics of innovation are complex, and difficult to shape. This book, written by experts in the field, sets out to explore the dynamics, the drivers and the setting of innovation processes. Case studies on micro cogeneration, carbon capture and storage, consumer feedback, network regulation and emissions trading provide insights into innovation dynamics in the electricity system and are analyzed to derive strategic implications for innovation policies. A special focus is placed on drivers and barriers of change, and their consequences for shaping the innovation process. This book is an indispensable source of information for researchers and decision makers in energy and climate change as well as for lecturers and students interested in the principles and ramifications of electricity innovation dynamics.

Meeting targets aimed at tackling the climate change challenge requires moving towards a low-carbon economy. These targets can only be met with major reductions in carbon emissions from the electricity sector. Written by a team of leading academics and industry experts, Delivering a Low Carbon Electricity System analyses the social, technological, economic and political issues that affect the attempt to create a low-carbon electricity sector and assesses the main instruments for achieving this aim. The book begins by looking at how low-carbon generation technologies might be added in sufficient quantity to the electricity system. Next, it examines how networks and the demand side can help to decarbonise the sector. It then highlights the role of innovation and discusses instruments for promoting technological progress. Finally, given the economic framework and technological possibilities, it presents a number of general and specific policy instruments and options for the future.

After six decades of Independence about half of rural households in the country do not have access to electricity and the quality and quantity of electricity provided to rural users are far from expectation. Large technical and commercial loss makes the rural electricity system financially unviable. The overall governance of rural electricity system has polluted the existing socio-political and economic environment to an extent that rational decision making has become far too difficult. The structural reform in electricity sector that started since early nineties has not resulted in improved services to the rural customers in spite of a significant increase in electricity tariff. From the experiences in India and around the world, the book provides directions for rural electricity system development in the country considering the development concerns, regulatory and policy issues, technology options and tariff, and governance mechanism.The book will be useful for the policymakers, regulators, rural electricity service providers, financial institutions, academicians, students and civil society organisations interested in rural electricity.

This book examines how multinational enterprises and international finance influenced the course of electrification around the world. Multinational enterprises played a crucial role in the spread of electric light and power from the 1870s through the first three decades of the twentieth century. However, their role did not persist, and by 1978 multinational enterprises in this sector had all but disappeared, replaced by electrical utility providers with national business structures. Yet, in recent years, there has been a vigorous revival. This book, a co-operative effort by the three authors and a group of experts from many countries, offers an analysis of the history of multinational enterprise. The authors take an integrated approach, not simply comparing national electrification experiences, but supplying a truly global account.

Beyond ideologies, beyond hiccups and cycles of reforms, privatisation of State Electricity Boards of India (SEBs), just alike their public reform, are structurally stalled. The book argues, the emphasis on ownership is misleading, and needs being articulated more subtly to a look at organisational structure of SEBs. An in-depth enquiry in SEBs shows how privatisation is a one-sided game that has no real takers as long as SEBs remain organisations in which all technical, accounting, financial parameters are at the least hazy, often unknown. No investors will come without guarantees, thus the public has impression that SEBs are 'privatised for a song', while the economists feels they are virtually value less...while in practice awaited investors do not even turn up. The book pinpoints, as the core of the stalemate, to the misconception in the very concepts generally used to analyse the internal organisation, the functioning, and the nature of SEBs. SEBs have now to undergo a specific and structural series of organisational changes, that the author calls 'enterprisation'. Privatisation is far from being the only tool for achieving this, among a wide set of public-private partnerships. The matter is of importance, for not all States and afford, the way Delhi did, paying for endlessly re-negotiable financial guarantees.

Today's electricity industry - large power stations feeding a nationwide grid - will soon be a thing of the past. This book explains why and what will replace it - decentralized and distributed electrical resources which can be up to 10 times as economically valuable. The authors - all leading experts in the field - explain very clearly and thoroughly all the benefits, so the engineers will understand the economic advantages and the investors will understand the engineering efficiencies. Here's what industry experts are saying about Small is Profitable... 'A tour-de-force and a goldmine of good ideas. It is going to have a stunning impact on thinking about electricity.' Walter C. Patterson, Senior Research Fellow, Royal Institute of International Affairs, London. 'An amazing undertaking - incredibly ambitious yet magnificently researched and executed.' Dr. Shimon Awerbuch, Senior Advisor, International Energy Agency, Paris. 'Outstanding...You have thought of some [benefits] I never considered...A great resource for the innovation in energy services that will have to take place for us to have a sustainable future.' Dr. Carl Weinberg, Weinberg Associates, former Research Director, PG&E. 'This is a brilliant synthesis and overview with a lot of original analytics and insights and a very important overall theme. I think it is going to have a big impact.' Greg Kats, Principal, Capital E LLC, former Finance Director for Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy. 'E. F. Schumacher would be proud of this rigorous extension of his thesis in Small is Beautiful. It shows how making systems the right size can make them work better and cost less. Here are critical lessons for the new century: technologies tailored to the needs of people, not the reverse, can improve the economy and the environment.' Dr. Daniel Kammen, Professor of Energy and Society and of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley. 'Small is Profitable creates an unconventional but impeccably reasoned foundation to correctly assign the costs and true benefits of distributed energy systems. It has become an indispensable tool for modelling distributed energy systems benefits for us.' Tom Dinwoodie, CEO and Chairman, PowerLight Corporation. 'A Unique and valuable contribution to the distributed energy industry...Small Is Profitable highlights the societal benefits of distributed resources, and will be a helpful guide to policymakers who wish to properly account for these benefits in the marketplace.' Nicholas Lenssen, Senior Director, Primen. 'This book will shift the electric industry from the hazards of overcentralization toward the new era where distributed generation will rule.' Steven J. Strong, President, Solar Design Associates, Inc. 'Readers will understand why distributed resources are poised to fundamentally alter the electric power system. Its comprehensive review of the benefits of distributed resources [is] an important part of my library.' Dr. Thomas E. Hoff, President, Clean Power Research. 'The most comprehensive treatise on distributed generation.... Great job and congratulations.' Howard Wenger, Principal, Pacific Energy Group '..[D]ensely packed with information and insights...goes a long way to demonstrate that the former paradigm of electric power supply no longer makes sense.' Prof. Richard Hirsh, University of Vermont, Leading historian of the electric power sector. 'Amory Lovins was already the world's most original and influential thinker on the future of energy services in general and electricity systems in particular. This remarkable book is a very worthy addition to an extraordinary legacy.' Ralph Cavanagh, Energy Co-Director, Natural Resources Defense Council. 'This is a book every utility professional should have on the bookshelf.' Dr Peter S. Fox-Penner, Principal and Chairman of the Board, the Brattle Group, former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy.