Shorting the Grid

The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid

De: Meredith Angwin

Narrado por: Eric G. Meyer

Grid insiders know how fragile the grid is becoming. Unfortunately, they have no incentive to solve the problem because near-misses increase their profits. Meredith Angwin describes how closed meetings, arcane auction rules, and five-minute planning horizons will topple the reliability of our electric grid. Shorting the Grid shines light on the vulnerabilities of our grid, and includes suggestions for making the grid more dependable.

©2020 Meredith Angwin (P)2022 Meredith Angwin

A must read!

As a retired Controls engineer from the now decommissioned San Onofre Nuclear Generating station I so much appreciate Meredith’s book. It provided a great deal of insight to much of the seemingly idiotic moves to shutdown nuclear energy. I believe nuclear power will come back with a vengeance in the coming years. The world has no choice.

Down the Grid Rabbit Hole

Must read if you discovered genre of US power grid books by various authors. Fascinating. The writing style was a bit edgy, but I appreciate the author's perspective. The narration became very choppy at the end of the book. The reader would pause uncomfortably, and it was made even worse by what may be sloppy editing. 1-2 second pauses every few sentences.

A Call to Action

The author shares a careers worth of knowledge and experience regarding grid reliability and opinions on how to influence the debate around the energy transition to maintain that reliability. I agree with the other reviewer that the book would benefit greatly from a pdf with the reference graphs.

The story is good / recording is not

The quality of the recording is very poor, but the story is very good. It needs to be re-recorded.

A Must listen for all who care about climate, energy security, and prosperity

This audiobook contains crucial information about a complex topic told in a relatable style with humor and clarity. For anyone who wants to better understand how our electricity is managed and delivered, this is a must listen. Eric G. Meyer’s narration is clear, precise, and easy to listen to. After finishing the book I am ready to listen again. There is so much to glean from Dr. Angwin’s research and analysis. You will come out of the experience more informed and armed with guidance on citizen action you can take to help ensure that we build a grid that is reliable, clean, and affordable for all.

Very Informative, But Desperately Needs A pdf

This book provides a wealth of information and insight into electricity pricing and the morass of regulations that jeopardize the stability of our grid. The audiobook makes numerous references to graphs and figures; yet no pdf came with this book. In over 12 years as an Audible subscriber, I have not listened to another Audible book that referenced graphs or figures without including a pdf that contained those references. I feel CHEATED by this publisher who was too cheap to provide a pdf. Additionally, Audible should have quality control standards that prevent such deficiencies.

An important book for every energy professional

extremely thorough review of today's issues with the electric power grid and potential solutions

Great education on the electric grid

I am getting smarter on clean energy. This was a great book to learn basics and to help form my own opinions. I am reading all sides of the debates. I highly recommend this book and plan to read the other 3 key books the author cited as fundamental to her work. If you are serious about energy sustainability through intelligent perspective, invest time in this long book.

Decent intro to the grid, but disorganized

Some others have mentioned that this seemed to be more of a means to tie together a bunch of blog posts than a "wing to wing" exploration of the grid. Overall it's a pretty good, but biased review (unapologetically, but very up front and honest about it) of a lot of the policy and structure of the grid. I appreciated the discussion about renewables at the end, but it still seemed a bit all over the place pulling in other bits and end from the rest of the book. Almost exclusively based on New England ISO which is kind of ok but it made the book seem as if the point was to say - "this is how NEISO operates so just extrapolate the same thing to the rest of the country" which isn't true and more discussion about other areas would have been a good addition as well as more coverage of areas not under an RTO. Basically it's a book about RTOs and specifically New England ISO. if you're looking for more about technology, how things work, and some policy background - this book only focuses on the last part and in only 1 part of the country at that. very pro-nuclear with a well laid out case for it which I also appreciated.
(my background is from the power/energy sector, but on the services side so I have no stake in the personal opinions of the author, but do have some background knowledge of the system).

if you buy this book, I suggest watching an hour or so of YouTube videos about the grid and some power basics just so you're not starting cold - that'll help you take in a lot more from this book.

Feels Fragmented and Regional

[2/3 through now, probably will finish and update]
I want to like this book, it's just very hard to stay actively listening to. I can't tell of it's the story or the narration though. I shifted from my normal 1.2x to 1.1x to 0.95x.

The narrator unexpectedly and suddenly shifts tones or pitches, as if many multiple seperate conversations were spliced together. Maybe there are cut-out blurbs in the actual book? If so, some notification would be helpful. I also think the narrator didn't understand what they were saying, as if reading a book aloud in class. Makes an already acronym dense book harder to follow because, I think, the emphasis(es?) are in odd spots.

I wish the story itself wasn't predominantly about the Northeast's power grid and had a more country wide perspective, even if the view had to shift from 5,000 feet to 30,000 feet. I realize it's the author's experience and "the grid" is a collection of regional areas, but there's a lot of details about specifically the politics of the Northeast's grid that could be cut to someone not from there.