We produce more wind and solar power than ever before, yet coal, oil, and gas constitute over 90 percent of our energy sources. Why? Blame it on the grid.

While our electrical grid was once an engineering marvel, today it is the Achilles heel of energy efficiency. In her book, The Grid: The Fraying Wires between Americans and Our Energy Future, McGill University Professor Gretchen Bakke explains why. A former Fellow in the Science in Society Program at Wesleyan University, she holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago.

In this interview, Bakke shares how our grid became what it is today and offers fascinating insights into the technologies, personalities, and policies that got us here. Along the way, she explains all the fascinating ways innovators are helping us rethink it and what the future of energy looks like.

In this interview, we talk about:  

What the U.S. electrical grid actually is

The history that informs the grid

Why it matters when we use electricity

Why the more we invest in green energy the more fragile our grid becomes

How our current grid binds us to non-renewable energy sources

How overgrown trees, sagging power lines, and a computer glitch caused a massive blackout in 2003

How electricity became a monopoly and a commodity

How grid complexity works against complete reliance on alternative energy

The good, the bad, and the ugly of smart meters

Why energy storage is the holy grail of the energy business

The innovation of vehicle-to-grid initiatives

The feasibility of wireless electricity

How an energy platform can help us reimagine the grid

How an energy cloud can help us de-regionalize our reliance on energy sources

What a cultural anthropologist brings to our understanding of the grid

The values and history embedded in our electrical grid

The fact that we made the grid and the grid makes us

Whether choreography serve as a tool for helping us rethink power

Episode Links

Arc lamp

Charles Edison

Charles Brush

Samuel Insull

National Energy Act

PURPA

Energy Policy Act of 1992

Enron

Walkable City by Jeff Speck

Vehicle to grid

Elon Musk

The Paris Talks

Energy cloud

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