“To everything, there is a season.”
Electricity is deep, deep infrastructure—try living (or making a living) without it. The hardware and the organizations that keep the lights on and your laptop humming are long-lasting and stable. There are 100+-year-old high-voltage transmission lines still in service, delivering power from equally ancient hydroelectric generators. Just as the Roman aqueducts allowed Rome to become the largest city in the world at 0 A.D, and are still delivering water in places, so too has electricity allowed the flourishing of modern technological civilization. For those of us in the electricity business, in our way of thinking, a ten-year planning horizon is “short-term” thinking.
We in the electric business really ask only three things from our customers. First, use our product safely, and don’t electrocute yourselves. Second, pay your just and fair electric bill each month to cover the costs. And lastly, try to stay out of our way as we work to serve you and your neighbors. One of our obligations is to be there for you so you can depend on electricity. Of course, we can’t afford to build for all contingencies (lights may go out during hurricanes, for example), and generally you don’t want to pay for perfection—generally 99.9+% reliability is considered about the right tradeoff of security of supply and capital investment.
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