An Electric Revolution, Chapter Seven: An Inconvenient Experiment
The federally led nationwide elimination of monopoly businesses in favor of competitive free markets has overwhelmingly succeeded in the airline, trucking, railroad and telecommunications industries, among others. Several states, including Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, Illinois and Connecticut, have begun opening retail electricity markets to competition, poising them to take full advantage of intelligent grid technology. Elsewhere, however, the inclination is to resist. As an astute energy research executive once pointed out, while a few utilities are warming to the idea of microgrids, most view them “as an existential threat to their business models.”
Utilities, however, can perhaps gain confidence from an analogy described in The Age of the Unthinkable. While many factors contributed to the demise of the former Soviet Union, author Ramo believes that it finally imploded only when the army officers, factory managers, mayors and other elites who managed the nation’s daily work simply let it go. He suggests that these individuals knew that if and when the empire fell, it was they who would be in the best position to pick up the pieces in Russia and the newly independent republics. The idea also carries a ring of truth in the case of AT&T, the deregulated phone monopoly that thrives in today’s competitive communications world. While no industry is ever deregulated without disruption, utilities are in an excellent position to follow the AT&T example and profitably implement many aspects of reform.
