Schewe: The Grid

From Scienticity

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Phillip F. Schewe, The Grid : A Journey through the Heart of our Electrified World. Washington, DC : Joseph Henry Press, 2007. 311 pages; with notes and index.

On 14 August 2003, small failures in transmission lines and automated power-distribution systems in Ohio led a cascade of system failures that resulted in a power blackout across most of New England in the US, and Ontario in Canada, affecting some 55 million people. Such a massive failure of electrical generating and delivery systems brought into sharp relief the notion that all of our continent's power generating capacity is interconnected and interdependent. It's all one big power grid.

How that interconnected and interdependent grid came about it Schewe's theme in this book. At the root is this imperative of physical behavior: the electrical power we use everyday cannot readily, or practically, be stored in any large-scale way. It must be generated as it is needed and consumed within seconds of being generated. To meet moment-to-moment demand means optimizing the output generating capacity of power-generating plants across the country, and spreading that capacity around.

But how that situation came about is a history of science, engineering, and society. There was no grid at the beginning of electrical service; it wasn't planned that way in some ab initio grand scheme. It grew piecemeal, an therein lies a tale of how electricity has come to affect our lives so profoundly in so short a time.

One of today's most precious commodities, electricity hardly figured in the life of cities before the end of the 19th century. Electricity played no role in the administration of Imperial Kyoto or the meteoric rise of Islamic Cairo. Electricity came too late to inspire the artists of Renaissance Florence or contribute to the glory of Paris in the time of Napoleon. Once it arrived, however, it became a big factor—some would say too big a factor—in the rhythm of urban existence.

The advent of electric power and its catalog of follow-on products radically changed the way many things were done: the architecture of buildings (which no longer had to be configured to maximize sunlight pouring in at the windows), the sprawl of suburbs (cheap electric trolleys allowed employees to live farther from work), the methods for storing and preparing food (perishables could be maintained for days, frozen goods for months), the organization of factories (which didn't have to be situated next to a river and could be kept open for night shifts), and the lighting and heating of homes. Fairly, we could argue that much of what we call modernity is fundamentally electrical in nature or at least dependent in a fundamental way on the electrical grid. [pp. 12—13]
[...]
In the year 10,000 BCE, or at any other time during the last 99.9 percent of human existence, automobiles, elevators, and traffic lights weren't around. To be in a dark place was the natural state of affairs, while to possess discretionary light was remarkable. Because of the electrical grid, all this is reversed. Having light all the time is the custom, and going lightless becomes a memorable anecdote. We need the grid. We count on it. When thousands of people get stalled in various metal conveyances moving horizontally through the city in subways or vertically in elevators and are made prisoner by the failure of a wire in Ohio, we are incredulous. How did this state of affairs come to be? I don't mean the particular interruption of the grid in 2003—we'll look at that later. I mean the grid itself, and not merely the metallic part of the grid alone. It won't be enough to recount the invention of electrified machines without also considering the impact of those machines on human life and on the planet. [p. 14]

Schewe sees his "grid" everywhere. It's the physically interconnected power-generation and distribution system, yes, but it's also the reflected interconnectedness of society, and a metaphor for virtually everything he writes about. I admit that I found Shewe's overuse of the work "grid" itself a bit tiresome. Perhaps he realized that, too:

You will notice that I use the word grid a lot in this book. Depending on the context, it will sometimes refer to the wires or electricity making capacity of a particular utility and sometimes to the totality of the electrical activity in a whole region, or even (at a later stage) the whole nation or world. [p. 58]

There was lots of fun stuff to learn from reading this book. I had had no idea about the importance of the electrical iron, for instance, in the adoption of home electrification by the suburban middle class.

Insull's first attempts at advertising the benefits of home electricity [for Chicago's Commonwealth Edison company c. 1907] were aimed primarily at rich folks. He started a monthly magazine, Electric City, and a store specializing in electric appliances. "Buy something electric for Christmas" was the slogan one year. He touted a portable "Electrical Cottage," displaying various impressive wares. Then came the ploy that earned Commonwealth Edison a place in the history of the early golden days of mass advertising. It worked like this. A cart was sent through residential neighborhoods. The cart was piled high with electric irons, and the man in charge was offering a bargain that would rival the tasty apple offered to Eve in the Garden of Eden. Ladies, allow electricity into your home—installation charges spread out over two years, with no financing charges applied—and replace your old, cumbersome flatirons with modern electric irons. We have 10,000 new irons to give away.

Here at last was temptation difficult to resist. Electric toasters or electric fans—these things were luxuries, hallmarks of a pampered life. But ironing—well, everyone needed clean clothes. After lighting, the next most used electric contrivance in the home was to be the iron. Heating and maneuvering the old flatirons from stove to shirt, back to the stove for reheating, and then more shirts, was muscle-aching and finger-blistering work, especially in summer. With the electric iron, there was still plenty of work to be done, but the energy for heating the irons arrived in thin wires. There would be much less hefting and sweating. [p. 70]

I had a few issues with missed scienticity moments. For instance, Schewe makes a visit to the power plant in New York City that houses the largest power-generating dynamo in the country ("Big Allis"), describing the noise and setting for the equipment and the power lines coming from it and heading up the building, but he never takes the opportunity to describe, even in the briefest terms, just how a dynamo works. Missed opportunities like this stand out when one is describing technology in an historical setting.

I have in my notes references for a few places where the scienticity was sloppy. We understand greenhouse effects quite well these days, so there's no excuse for referring casually to "some weird greenhouse mechanism" [p. 196]. On page 210, writing "A slimmer version of uranium is U-235, whose nucleus contains several fewer neutrons than U238"; in fact, it contains exactly three fewer neutrons and there's no reason for obfuscating this fact in this way. When he concludes his section about nuclear power plants [p. 220] he talks about how much fissionable material is in the reactor core in terms of how big an atomic bomb it could make, then he backs up and points out that the material, as it is used in a nuclear reactor, could not possibly explode. It's sloppy and threatens clear comprehension on the part of the reader.

Schewe's subject is a big, sprawling one that he tames pretty well. Organizing such a collection of historical tidbits is a challenge to be sure and Schewe does a pretty good job of keeping our path through it all pretty clearly marked. At its best his writing is straightforward and good, journalistic reportage; at its worst he succumbs to poor metaphors that turn out more like decorations to his prose than devices to deepen his meaning.

However, I think my misgiving are not terribly serious, more minor irritations. My overall impression of the book was positive; I found it interesting and informative reading.

-- Notes by JNS