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This week were talking about ten utility electric company myths and were going to debunk these myths, but first a little background. Electric utilities started in the U.S. in the 1880s. Thomas Edison came up with a way of generating DC power, and then George Westinghouse came up with a concept of AC power, which ultimately became the industry standard and grew rapidly. The fundamentals of the utility industry are you generate power in a central location with big power plants; originally coal fired, then oil, then gas, then nuclear, now solar. You then have transmission lines that transmit the electricity at high voltages over long distances. Then you have local distribution networks –those utility wires above and underground, and transformers that look like tin cans on utility poles, and these local distribution lines send lower voltage power to businesses and homes in the area. It’s a terrific industry, many innovations and it’s been a key part of our industrial economy’s growth. They deliver power safely, and relatively inexpensive in relation to what it used to cost –it is pretty affordable when you consider the alternatives, such as putting in your own wood burning generator --crazy.

But the thing is, the way we generate power and the way we can now store power, and the way we are using the technology is changing rapidly. The way we would store power even as little as ten years ago was we would build dams to store water, then run turbines to generate electricity as the water in the dam goes down. We can still do that but it is easier to store power in a battery.

Now that we have solar and wind power, as well as affordable energy storage we have to reconsider the role of utility companies. Because of changes in technology, we have less need for big utility companies that generate power centrally and transmit that power over long distances to our homes and businesses.

So where all this going is and what does it mean for homeowners and businesses? Listen up to this week’s Energy Show as we cover the top ten myths about utility companies that they use to justify their actions to ratepayers and competing industries like solar.