Opinion

Did Reid threaten the electric utility industry?

Chuck Muth

August 26, 2015

(Thomas Mitchell) – Soon NV Energy President Paul Caudill will take the stage at Reid’s clean energy confab.

I wonder if he listened to Reid’s opening monologue?

Here is the clip from that speech as posted online by his personal newsletter:

I look forward to President Obama outlining his Clean Power Plan, which will be the strongest action ever taken by our country to curb climate change and boost clean energy. But, notwithstanding all of the progress we have made over the last decade, we still have many miles to travel before we sleep. In fact, in many respects, we are still stuck in the 19th century.

In 1882, more than a century before we gathered for the first National Clean Energy Summit, Thomas Edison was busy inventing the first electricity grid. Edison’s grid was improved by George Westinghouse in 1886 – an electric grid that is remarkably similar to ours today. Consider that – the grid technology that utility companies rely on is older than the Model T Ford.

This grid system makes money for utilities by generating electricity at central plants and delivering that power to customers through power lines. Costs for the infrastructure are paid by all customers based on how much power they consume – the more electricity we use, the more we pay. This utility business model made sense for many decades.

But electric utilities never imagined that families and businesses would be able to generate energy for the same price as utility power plants. They didn’t consider that consumers would rather pay to make their homes more efficient than pay for power they don’t need. And they didn’t expect Americans would grow to believe that reducing climate-changing carbon pollution is a priority.

Our electric grid has barely changed in a century, but that is quickly coming to an end. American demand for clean, reliable power choices is forcing change that is accelerating.