The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future
“If you guys ever want to read an interesting book about how the grid operates, there's a book called The Grid.”
Why it is worth your time
The Grid is Gretchen Bakke's 2016 book on the US electricity system. Bakke is a cultural anthropologist, not an engineer, and she treats the grid as a 100-year-old machine shaped by law and habit as much as physics. She covers how the system grew from Edison's Pearl Street station, why it must balance supply and demand every second, why wind and solar strain that balance, and why utilities resist change. Bill Gates put it on his list of favorite books for 2016. Friedberg suggested it on the Jul 8, 2021 episode for anyone who wanted to understand how the grid operates. It suits general readers with no technical background. The caveats are that it covers only the US grid, the policy detail dates from 2016, and economist Ahmad Faruqui, in Public Utilities Fortnightly, found sweeping generalizations and factual errors.
