Download or read book Technology and Transformation in the American Electric Utility Industry written by Richard F. Hirsh and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-11-20 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book illuminates the role of technological stagnation in the decline of the American electric utility industry in the late 1960s and 1970s. Unlike other interpreters of the industry's woes, Professor Hirsh argues that a long and successful history of managing a conventional technology set the stage for the industry's deterioration. After improving steadily for decades, the technology that brought unequalled productivity growth to the industry appeared to stall in the late 1960s, making it impossible to mitigate the economic and regulatory assaults of the 1970s. Unfortunately, most managers did not recognize (or did not want to believe) the severity of the technological problems they faced, and they chose to focus instead on issues (usually financial or public relations) that appeared more manageable. Partly as a result of this lack of attention to technological issues, the industry found itself in the 1980s challenged by the prospects of deregulation and restructuring.
Download or read book Powering American Farms written by Richard F. Hirsh and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Challenging traditional scholarship on the New Deal, the book reinterprets the history of rural electrification. It tells the previously unacknowledged story of how private power companies, with allies in land-grant universities, engendered social and technical innovations in the 1920s and early 1930s that enabled growing numbers of farmers to obtain electrical service, well before the creation of Depression-era government programs"--
Download or read book Transformation of the Electric Utility Business Model written by John Manshreck and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-11-22 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines business model transformation through the study of electrical utilities, an industry at the center of today’s efforts to combat climate change. When change comes to the business model of such a mature industry, the pattern is often recognizable. The foundational elements of the industry shift, allowing the innovation of business models by new competitors, while established firms face the threat of disruption. The utility sector, after decades of relative stability, is in the midst of such a transformation today. After providing a historical summary of the dominant business models of the utility sector, Transformation of the Electric Utility Business Model looks at the factors currently impacting the industry. Utilities and policy makers today are facing two long-term issues that will dominate their agendas in the coming decades: rebuilding utility infrastructure to enable the decarbonization of the economy, and managing the risk of catastrophic events that can leave large areas without power for extended periods. Fortunately, with proper planning, many utility investments in decarbonization will also support risk management. However, these investments are often not compatible with current utility business models, requiring creativity and new regulatory frameworks to successfully implement. This book considers the impact of these factors, and then discusses the future. This well-researched, extremely insightful book is essential reading for all those with an interest in business strategy, energy studies and sustainability.
Download or read book The Power of Change written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2016-09-30 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Electricity, supplied reliably and affordably, is foundational to the U.S. economy and is utterly indispensable to modern society. However, emissions resulting from many forms of electricity generation create environmental risks that could have significant negative economic, security, and human health consequences. Large-scale installation of cleaner power generation has been generally hampered because greener technologies are more expensive than the technologies that currently produce most of our power. Rather than trade affordability and reliability for low emissions, is there a way to balance all three? The Power of Change: Innovation for Development and Deployment of Increasingly Clean Energy Technologies considers how to speed up innovations that would dramatically improve the performance and lower the cost of currently available technologies while also developing new advanced cleaner energy technologies. According to this report, there is an opportunity for the United States to continue to lead in the pursuit of increasingly clean, more efficient electricity through innovation in advanced technologies. The Power of Change: Innovation for Development and Deployment of Increasingly Clean Energy Technologies makes the case that America's advantagesâ€"world-class universities and national laboratories, a vibrant private sector, and innovative states, cities, and regions that are free to experiment with a variety of public policy approachesâ€"position the United States to create and lead a new clean energy revolution. This study focuses on five paths to accelerate the market adoption of increasing clean energy and efficiency technologies: (1) expanding the portfolio of cleaner energy technology options; (2) leveraging the advantages of energy efficiency; (3) facilitating the development of increasing clean technologies, including renewables, nuclear, and cleaner fossil; (4) improving the existing technologies, systems, and infrastructure; and (5) leveling the playing field for cleaner energy technologies. The Power of Change: Innovation for Development and Deployment of Increasingly Clean Energy Technologies is a call for leadership to transform the United States energy sector in order to both mitigate the risks of greenhouse gas and other pollutants and to spur future economic growth. This study's focus on science, technology, and economic policy makes it a valuable resource to guide support that produces innovation to meet energy challenges now and for the future.
Download or read book Too Far on a Whim written by Tyler A. Pitrof and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that the US Navy's commitment to high-steam propulsion for its World War II fleet was a tactical, technological, and bureaucratic failure
Download or read book The Structure of American Industry written by James W. Brock and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The major American industries—agriculture, petroleum, electricity, banking, telecommunications, movies, college sports, airlines, health care, and the beer, cigarette, and automotive industries—intersect our lives every day. Studying these industries raises a number of economic questions: How are the individual industries organized and structured? What is their history? What are the dominant organizations in each field, and what share of their market do they represent? What is the nature of competition in these fields, and how effectively does it govern economic decision making? The nature of these industries also raises a host of public policy challenges: What significant policy issues do they pose, what options are available for addressing them, and what role can and should the government play? Unlike other books that offer economic treatments focused on theoretical expositions and analyses, the thirteenth edition addresses all these questions in a manner that treats each industry in a comprehensive, holistic way. Brock’s approach focuses on everyday experience, enhancing readers’ understanding through examples that emphasize incident and detail. Each chapter, written by an expert in the field, has been updated or rewritten for this edition. A new chapter on the movie industry has been added as well. This outstanding overview of American industry offers the reader a live laboratory of clinical examination and comparative analysis.
Download or read book The Diffusion of New Technologies written by Nancy L. Rose and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Future of Utilities Utilities of the Future written by Fereidoon Sioshansi and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Future of Utilities - Utilities of the Future: How technological innovations in distributed generation will reshape the electric power sector relates the latest information on the electric power sector its rapid transformation, particularly on the distribution network and customer side. Trends like the rapid rise of self-generation and distributed generation, microgrids, demand response, the dissemination of electric vehicles and zero-net energy buildings that promise to turn many consumers into prosumers are discussed. The book brings together authors from industry and academic backgrounds to present their original, cutting-edge and thought-provoking ideas on the challenges currently faced by electric utilities around the globe, the opportunities they present, and what the future might hold for both traditional players and new entrants to the sector. The book's first part lays out the present scenario, with concepts such as an integrated grid, microgrids, self-generation, customer-centric service, and pricing, while the second part focuses on how innovation, policy, regulation, and pricing models may come together to form a new electrical sector, exploring the reconfiguring of the current institutions, new rates design in light of changes to retail electricity markets and energy efficiency, and the cost and benefits of integration of distributed or intermittent generation, including coupling local renewable energy generation with electric vehicle fleets. The final section projects the future function and role of existing electrical utilities and newcomers to this sector, looking at new pathways for business and pricing models, consumer relations, technology, and innovation. - Contains discussions that help readers understand the underlying causes and drivers of change in the electrical sector, and what these changes mean in financial, operational, and regulatory terms - Provides thought-provoking ideas on the challenges currently faced by electric utilities around the globe, the opportunities they present, and what the future might hold for both traditional players and new entrants to the sector - Helps readers anticipate what developments are likely to define the function and role of the utility of the future
Download or read book Power Loss written by Richard F. Hirsh and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2002-07-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1990s, the formerly staid and monopolistic electric utility industry entered an era of freewheeling competition and deregulation, allowing American consumers to buy electricity from any company offering it. In this book, Richard F. Hirsh explains how and why this radical restructuring has occurred. Hirsh starts by describing the successful campaign waged by utility managers in the first decade of the twentieth century to protect their industry from competition. The regulated system that emerged had the unanticipated consequence of endowing utility managers with great political and economic power. Seven decades later, a series of largely unanticipated events, including technological stagnation in traditional generating equipment, the 1973 energy crisis, and the rise of the environmental movement, undermined the managers' control of the system. New players, such as academics, environmental advocates, politicians, and potential competitors, wrested control from power company managers by challenging utilities' standing as "natural monopolies" and by questioning whether their firms provided universal benefits. In other words, the once-closed system came under increasing pressure to transform itself. Hirsh follows the flow of power as this transformation occurred. He also examines the relationship between technological change and regulation, showing how innovations such as cogeneration and renewable energy technologies stimulated questions about the value of government oversight of the system. And he shows how the increasing prominence of ideas such as conservation, energy efficiency, and free markets helped propel the system toward open competition. Though the new electric utility system is still in its infancy, Hirsh's perceptive account of its birth will help readers think more rationally about its future.
Download or read book The Virtual Utility written by Shimon Awerbuch and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the winter of 1996, after 4 years of planning and research, the Symposium on the Virtual Utility was held in Saratoga Springs, New York. It was sponsored by Niag ara Mohawk Power Corporation, Co-sponsored by CSC Index and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and hosted by Rensselaer Poly technic Institute, Troy, NY. The symposium sought to identify new areas of inquiry by presenting cutting-edge academic and practitioner research intended to further our understanding of the strategic, technologically-driven issues confronting the elec tricity production and distribution process. The program sought to offer new in sights into rapid changes in the utility industry, in part, by examining analogues from manufacturing and telecommunications. In addition to identifying new research areas, the symposium yielded a number of important findings and conclusions. This volume contains the presented papers of the meeting, the discussant reports and two special papers prepared by the meet ing rapporteurs who performed superbly in analyzing, synthesizing, explaining and generally bringing a cohesive perspective to the interesting yet complex set of ideas presented at this unique meeting. We would like to acknowledge the people and organizations that contributed to this effort. We thank Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation and Albert Budney, its President & Chief Operating Officer for sponsoring this project, and Andrew Vesey, Vice President, I whose vision, support and championing made this project possible.
Download or read book The Structure of American Industry written by James Brock and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2013-03-20 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans continually cross paths with major industries that comprise the U.S. economy. These industries face and raise challenging issues that in turn generate important economic questions: How are individual industries organized and structured? What share of their market do they represent? What are the major public policy issues they affect? What are the economic consequences of addressing them? A single text examining every industry would provide a disjointed, haphazard analysis. The case-study approach taken in The Structure of American Industry avoids such shortcomings. The expert author of each case studyfourteen in allpresents a comprehensive and coherent analysis of a specific industry. The holistic, in-depth treatment sparks lively interest, does not succumb to theoretical abstractions, and offers practical answers to economic questions.
Download or read book The Power Makers written by Maury Klein and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maury Klein is one of America's most acclaimed historians of business and society. In The Power Makers, he offers an epic narrative of his greatest subject yet - the "power revolution" that transformed American life in the course of the nineteenth century. The steam engine; the incandescent bulb; the electric motor-inventions such as these replaced backbreaking toil with machine labor and changed every aspect of daily life in the span of a few generations. The cast of characters includes inventors like James Watt, Elihu Thomson, and Nikola Tesla; entrepreneurs like George Westinghouse; savvy businessmen like J.P. Morgan, Samuel Insull, and Charles Coffin of General Electric. Striding among them like a colossus is the figure of Thomas Edison, who was creative genius and business visionary at once. With consummate skill, Klein recreates their discoveries, their stunning triumphs and frequent failures, and their unceasing, bare-knuckled battles in the marketplace. In Klein's hands, their personalities and discoveries leap off the page. The Power Makers is a dazzling saga of inspired invention, dogged persistence, and business competition at its most naked and cutthroat--a biography of America in its most astonishing decades.
Download or read book Energy and American Society Thirteen Myths written by Benjamin K. Sovacool and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-05-04 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes on a central quandary in the study of energy and environmental policy: What myths continue to exist in American culture concerning energy, the environment, and society? It enrolls twenty-four of the nation’s top experts working on energy policy to debunk and contextualize thirteen energy myths relating to electric power, renewable energy, energy efficiency, transportation, and climate change. The book will appeal to an international audience.
Download or read book Energy in American History written by Jeffrey B. Webb and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2024 with total page 1015 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Contextualizes and analyzes the key energy transitions in U.S. history and the central importance of energy production and consumption on the American environment and in American culture and politics"--
Download or read book The Grid written by Julie A Cohn and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-02-02 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the grid, the world's largest interconnected power machine that is North America's electricity infrastructure. The North American power grid has been called the world's largest machine. The grid connects nearly every living soul on the continent; Americans rely utterly on the miracle of electrification. In this book, Julie Cohn tells the history of the grid, from early linkages in the 1890s through the grid's maturity as a networked infrastructure in the 1980s. She focuses on the strategies and technologies used to control power on the grid—in fact made up of four major networks of interconnected power systems—paying particular attention to the work of engineers and system operators who handled the everyday operations. To do so, she consulted sources that range from the pages of historical trade journals to corporate archives to the papers of her father, Nathan Cohn, who worked in the industry from 1927 to 1989—roughly the period of key power control innovations across North America. Cohn investigates major challenges and major breakthroughs but also the hidden aspects of our electricity infrastructure, both technical and human. She describes the origins of the grid and the growth of interconnection; emerging control issues, including difficulties in matching generation and demand on linked systems; collaboration and competition against the backdrop of economic depression and government infrastructure investment; the effects of World War II on electrification; postwar plans for a coast-to-coast grid; the northeast blackout of 1965 and the East-West closure of 1967; and renewed efforts at achieving stability and reliability after those two events.
Download or read book The Oxford Companion to United States History written by Paul S. Boyer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-07-04 with total page 984 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is a volume that is as big and as varied as the nation it portrays. With over 1,400 entries written by some 900 historians and other scholars, it illuminates not only America's political, diplomatic, and military history, but also social, cultural, and intellectual trends; science, technology, and medicine; the arts; and religion. Here are the familiar political heroes, from George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, to Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. But here, too, are scientists, writers, radicals, sports figures, and religious leaders, with incisive portraits of such varied individuals as Thomas Edison and Eli Whitney, Babe Ruth and Muhammed Ali, Black Elk and Crazy Horse, Margaret Fuller, Emma Goldman, and Marian Anderson, even Al Capone and Jesse James. The Companion illuminates events that have shaped the nation (the Great Awakening, Bunker Hill, Wounded Knee, the Vietnam War); major Supreme Court decisions (Marbury v. Madison, Roe v. Wade); landmark legislation (the Fugitive Slave Law, the Pure Food and Drug Act); social movements (Suffrage, Civil Rights); influential books (The Jungle, Uncle Tom's Cabin); ideologies (conservatism, liberalism, Social Darwinism); even natural disasters and iconic sites (the Chicago Fire, the Johnstown Flood, Niagara Falls, the Lincoln Memorial). Here too is the nation's social and cultural history, from Films, Football, and the 4-H Club, to Immigration, Courtship and Dating, Marriage and Divorce, and Death and Dying. Extensive multi-part entries cover such key topics as the Civil War, Indian History and Culture, Slavery, and the Federal Government. A new volume for a new century, The Oxford Companion to United States History covers everything from Jamestown and the Puritans to the Human Genome Project and the Internet--from Columbus to Clinton. Written in clear, graceful prose for researchers, browsers, and general readers alike, this is the volume that addresses the totality of the American experience, its triumphs and heroes as well as its tragedies and darker moments.
Download or read book American Energy Policy in the 1970s written by Robert Lifset and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-04-03 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Middle East blow-ups, pipeline politics, wind farm controversies, solar industry scandals, and disputes over fracking, it's natural to think that the energy policy debate is at its most intense ever. But it's easy to forget that energy issues dominated the nation's politics in the 1970s as well. Wars were fought, political careers made and unmade, and fortunes gambled and lost, all because of the vagaries of energy production and consumption, which held the American public and its politicians in thrall. This historical investigation focuses exclusively on American energy policy in the 1970s. Revisiting the last time energy issues came to the forefront of national political discourse, the essays collected here provide new insight into the energy crisis of that decade—insights with clear implications for our present dilemmas. Among a new generation of energy historians, the authors address questions of political leadership, foreign policy, supply, and demand. Chapters examine the politics of energy policymaking; efforts by American policymakers to increase supply and reduce demand; and the challenge of crafting American foreign policy as the Middle East emerges as the world’s leading oil-producing region. American Energy Policy in the 1970s reminds us of a wide range of policy successes and failures and offers an in-depth look at the complicated workings of such issues as café standards, alternative energy supplies, nuclear power, conservation, the strategic petroleum reserve, and the Carter Doctrine. This book restores historical clarity and context to the complex and politically freighted discussion of energy in America. It should inform and enlighten the discussion going forward.
