Furthermore, the grid is a far more technical and capital intensive (ie. less people intensive) business than say hospitals, and hence it lends itself better to centralised state control and monopoly. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Deciding where the most efficient new and rebuilt lines and substations, as well as who's going to pay, hasn't been managed well by the current state of affairs. for example, excellent wind projects in California have been waiting for over a decade! for transmission issues to be resolved.
The grid, as a social necessity, needs to be managed centrally, with efficiency as the ultimate criteria. With appropriate oversight regulation of course. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
The grid, as a social necessity, needs to be managed centrally, with efficiency as the ultimate criteria.
There is a reasonable argument if the finer mesh of the grid is better managed by smaller and more nimble companies, and reasonable people can disagree over that. It's is probably heavily dependent on local characteristics. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
As J pointed out before, it was the incompetence, not the government or the system, hindered by the quarterly profit motive. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
By sheer repetition (of the above, plus the trumpeting that the profits reliably extracted by the shareholders of the private companies put in charge of the rent were a good thing), it worked.
But the fact is, the problem is not the government, it's the incompetence. And privatisation is not the only solution to that. Quite the opposite: demonising the government further makes it worse, as fewer people want to work for government in the positions required to do the job. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
