This past month, we celebrated independence day for the United States. The U.S. was founded by a group of revolutionaries who value personal freedom over authoritarian edicts, policies and taxes. For 249 years we have been a shining city on a hill, an example of what freedom could look like. In no other time in history has individual freedom been coupled together in a collective project so successfully. Our original motto, e pluribus unum, perfectly encapsulates the vision. From many independent, free, people we get one nation. I believe this ethos courses through the veins of any true American and American enterprise. Despite this ideal, many Americans feel like we are drifting further and further from it. Why does it seem like we are losing this great identity?
This motto of ours is not mutually exclusive, you must have both working interdependently to have an exemplary nation, institution or industry. Too focused on the individual and we are disunited and selfish; too much emphasis on unity and there is no innovation and progress. The everlasting dance between the freedom of the individual and those diverse individuals coming together to form a unity is one of continuous struggle. Disillusionment is felt when we are out of balance; when one partner of the dance is taking too much control. To see this imbalance in action we can look at America’s once-great electric industry. Its history offers a perfect mirror for this struggle and the struggle of America: a story of innovation and rising from many to one, only to fall out of balance and become too governed by the invisible collective. We must rebalance to reclaim our right as Americans in at least this one small part of our lives.
It was Benjamin Franklin, a founder of our nation, who started American electricity innovation with his audacious experiment to draw power directly from lightning. A century or so after that Thomas Edison was able to make light not just a natural phenomenon consisting of the sun, lightning or fire but that of human-controlled electric current. We had the first public electrically lit city in Ohio, the first electric company to sell power in California, the first harnessed hydroelectric power, the first electric wind turbine. The electricity revolution started as pockets of independent electricity generators; some in New York City, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland and California. Individual pioneers used the inventions from our brothers and sisters in Europe to make their own electricity with wind turbines and batteries to service farms and rural areas. When Tesla, a naturalized American, perfected the system for alternating current (AC) and successfully won the bid to transfer Niagara Falls’ electricity, the advent of connecting everyone in America to electricity began.
What started as small independent power producers began to change when Samuel Insull, a visionary credited with accelerating the electric infrastructure in the United States, discovered that economies of scale could greatly lower electricity costs for people purchasing the power. Larger and larger hydropower and coal-fired power plants were built that serviced many more people at significantly lower costs than before. Soon it was substantially cheaper for all individuals to interconnect to this grid and not build their own. Utilities started to create transmission lines between them. Regional power pools, what will grow into the complex transmission grids that we have today, were born to increase reliability and to share power during periods of peak demand. The many smaller power producers gradually began to spin a web that eventually would span the continent.
At first, utilities serviced customers only of their geographic region. One cannot have a hydroelectric power station with no river! Likewise, the demand for electricity needed to be enough to pay for the cost of the power plants. Therefore, coal plants were built for large population centers (think New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh to name a few) to help industry where there was no easy possibility for hydroelectric. These urban utilities serviced only their population centers and left out the rural people due to those locations being unprofitable. To bring everyone in America to the electric age, Franklin D. Roosevelt included as part of the great new deal the institution of the Rural Electrification Administration which offered low interest loans to cooperative energy communities within rural America. From 1935 only 10% of rural areas had electricity compared to 90% of urban areas; by 1960 almost all Americans had access to power. Coupled with the first commercial nuclear power plant in the world coming online in 1957 in Pennsylvania, the ability to make power plants anywhere to service any population was complete.
Regional power pools grew to the intricate balance of generation, transmission and distribution that we know today. What started as individuals creating power for a few homes’ worth of lightbulbs became magic that everyone depended on for basic living. The many became one.
But what happens when the one takes the place of the many? Flash forward to the present and we have had a stagnant supply of electricity with ever increasing electricity costs. What was once a great initiative to bring power to all now burdens utilities with providing power for remote homes at the expense of the rest of the ratepayers. What was originally geographically focused based on necessity is now due to existing infrastructure and regulatory capture. What was first interconnected to increase reliability has led to blackouts and power outages. We have come to the point where the solutions to past problems that worked for decades have overstayed their welcome. The electrical infrastructure and regulations in America have become calcified. The very same institutions that were created to bring everyone inexpensive electricity are now working against people who want to create the grid of the future.
The reason that the utilities won out over independent power producers was due to price and reliability. A century ago, this was the case. We are no longer at the stage where it is cheaper and more reliable for us to rely on utilities for our power. People and businesses can and should once again become their own power producers. Homes and businesses are doing this with solar, wind or geothermal + storage. Datacenters and AI facilities are restarting nuclear reactors or purchasing entire gas generation facilities to satisfy their energy consumption and reliability concerns. While this is an upfront investment, anyone who becomes their own power producer becomes immune from volatile utility rates, locks in their cost for decades and doesn’t need to worry about grid outages. The many can take back control over our energy needs.
The technologies to reclaim our energy independence are no longer science fiction; they are on our roofs and in our garages. Key solutions include distributed energy resource communities and enabling customers to export power to the grid from their vehicles, batteries or home generators. Imagine a neighborhood where rooftop solar, wind, gas generators, batteries and electric vehicles are interconnected, forming a local microgrid. When a storm knocks out the main grid, this community can disconnect and power itself, sharing energy to keep the lights on for everyone. From many independent homes, one resilient community emerges. Right now, that is technologically possible but the current regulatory framework actively works against this kind of innovation! This will require an overhaul of the status quo that we have used for the past century. We must take back control from the one, each of us. Only when the many are autonomous and free can they come together as one.
