Focus 580; Power Loss: The Origins of Deregulation and Restructuring in the American Electrical Utility System

Well this morning in this hour of focus 580 we will be talking about deregulation of the electric utility industry for some time now. If you have been listening to the news and paying attention the news we've been hearing about the various difficulties that folks have been facing in the state of California with shortages and rolling blackouts. And officials have attributed much of this to the way that deregulation was handled in that state which in turn caused people other places where they were talking about deregulation this is one of them that is this this state Illinois we're in the process of deregulating has led people other places around the country to ask some rather nervous questions about whether or not that could happen here. We're going to try to do this morning with our guest Richard Hirsch is talk a little bit about where we've come from and where we're going on the topic of regulation a little bit about how it is that utility companies got to be regulated monopolies in the first place and then some of the forces that came to bear on them particularly in the 70s that set the stage

for deregulation and then maybe talk a little bit about where things are headed over the net. A decade or so as this process continues. Our guest is a professor of history and of science and technology studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and he's done a lot of writing on the subject and name a recent book that you might want to look at if you'd like to read more about the subject it's titled power loss the origins of deregulation and restructuring in the American electric utility system. It is published by the MIT Press. And as we talk of course questions are welcome. The number if you're here in Champagne Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 Also we have toll free line that's good anywhere that you can hear would be a long distance call for you. Eight hundred to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Professor HERSH Oh thanks We're talking with us today. Oh my pleasure. We appreciate it. Just to sort of set the stage for where we

are now I think your suggestion was I think it was a good one just to go back a little bit and talk about how it is we ended up with the utilities that we had on the eve of deregulation. And I think in some of your writings you look all the way back to the beginning and look at the first periods where then major markets at least there were competing entrepreneurs who were trying to set up systems to provide electricity to people. And what they found out was that they really needed to have as many customers as they possibly could have to to be profitable and that led to consolidation and takeovers and people going out of business to the point where we really came down to what were in effect monopolies. They were regulated monopolies but they were monopolies nonetheless. Right. But we that is. As as a society I guess decided that in those particular cases that that was OK. And in in the book Power loss you

write about something that you call the utility consensus that said Well all right. Yes there are monopolies but we think that with proper controls that's all right. How did we arrive at the point where we decided that you know we we were dollar monopolies in other industries. But as far as people providing electricity we said well that's OK. Why did we decide that that was our right. That's right. This country of the history of not liking monopolies. And yet in some circumstances it seems that monopolies can provide better services to customers than if there were competition. We learned that in the railroad industry starting in the 1850s and 60s where it just didn't seem to make sense to have two sets of railroad lines going parallel to each other to the same destinations. There were huge capital expenses in that industry. And as a matter of normal business the competitors tended to work together they bought each other out whatever. And then you ended up with a de facto

monopoly that could charge whatever it wanted. Regulation came in in the 1870s and 80s in the railroad business to try and deal with a monopoly like the railroad industry. Neck really wasn't serving customers very well because they could charge high rates. The regulation there came in to deal with an industry that was viewed as evil. To make it so that it would be better for customers. Now the electric utility industry was a little bit different but there were parallels there. The electric utility industry essentially started in 1882 with Thomas Edison's power plant in New York City. Other competitors got into the business they were supplying electricity to customers within cities and eventually you started seeing the same thing. The companies realized that they could do better if they had larger numbers of customers they could eliminate duplicate facilities power plants train distribution lines and the like.

And by the 1890s you started seeing de facto monopolies in the utility business as well. This is all during the Progressive era of American history you can go back to your high school textbooks and learn more about that. But basically what you saw was an effort by some progressive politicians. To regulate these monopolies they were viewed as a natural monopoly meaning again that they would serve customers better if there were only one company producing electricity producing those services. And if there were competitors but as part of this progressive era movement people realized that these monopolies have to be overseen by government so that they could not exploit their monopoly status like the railroad companies did. So in the early 1900s a few states especially New York and Wisconsin started regulating these monopolies. But what really is interesting here

is that many of the leaders of the utility industry wanted regulation. In fact in your area in Illinois you had Samuel insole head of Commonwealth. Then who thought of regulation and he sought regulation because he thought it would make utility companies look better in the public eye but also that they were the very definite business benefits of regulation regulation would help stabilize the business and make the bond and stock offerings of these companies look more attractive to investors. So while regulation was somewhat imposed on the utility industry it was different than the railroad industry because there were indeed many people in the industry who wanted regulation and very quickly regulation was meant to do two things it was meant to help customers so that they wouldn't be exploited by monopoly companies so that the monopoly companies couldn't charge whatever they wanted. But it was also designed to protect the

utility companies. After all the utilities were providing a necessary commodity or a commodity that eventually became necessary electric power. And it was in the interest the public interest to make sure that those companies stayed in business. So the used the utility regulators made sure that the rates were high enough to provide a profit to the utility companies and make sure those companies stayed solvent. And this again was one of the things that insole looked forward to as a marketing device for investors. After all investors like the notion that the company is somewhat protected it's going to get guaranteed profits and it's not going to go under. So it looks very nice. The regulator the utility consensus back in the early 1900s. Basically suggested that were basically accepted the notion that utilities were natural monopolies but that they needed regulation so that they would not exploit the

monopoly status but also to protect the utilities themselves. And we see that that dual function of regulation going forward or that dual function of regulation continues throughout the 20th century and even up to the 21st century now in California. Obviously you see customers getting upset at higher rates and yet the regulators have to make sure that the companies stay in business. Otherwise there's no electricity. The utilities for maybe about three quarters of the last century continued to do well. They grew the customer base grew they built bigger and bigger power plants as a result. The cost of electricity to consumers steadily went down over that period but when we get to the 70s utility companies started to experience a number of significant problems. In part I guess they did they realized that there was a point at which getting bigger Didn't you

know building bigger power plants and getting bigger What was not going to benefit. Them there was the energy crisis which indeed did affect them in the the seventies. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what what sort of things were happening. Large economic issues were happening at this point to cause so many difficulties for the industry. OK you you mention a very important point here and I'll just a. Little question on that. The electric utility industry seems like a model regulated industry for almost three quarters of the 20th century. The industry demonstrated decreasing prices decreasing costs. And the reason the major reason for that was because the standard generating technology of the industry steam turbine generators kept improving incrementally throughout the 20th century. They were able to produce more electricity using less fuel.

There were associated improvements in transmission and distribution as well. And in fact the cost of electricity throughout the first three quarters of the 20th century went down. And as the costs went down prices went down. Just to give you an idea of how much costs went down if you look at the inflation adjusted price of electricity to a residential customer in 1892 that. Cost in in in 2001 terms would have been about four and a half dollars per kilowatt hour. The average residential price for electricity in the country now is about 8 to 9 cents per kilowatt hour. So you saw a decline of about 98 percent in the price of electricity and the price today actually an injust in adjusted terms is pretty close to what it was in 1970 or so. OK. So the price went down largely because of these technological changes.

In the 1970s there were some major problems. One major problem was that the standard technology stopped improving. There are a whole bunch of reasons for this and in a previous book I discussed those reasons and. The technology the standard traditional technology simply stopped getting better technical and managerial reasons explain this. I won't go into that. So you have. The technology no longer improving and in the past the improved technology mitigated price increases due to inflation or other reasons. So you don't have the new technology out there that's going to mitigate whatever's going to come along. And of course what came along in 1973 with the oil embargo and the first of a couple of energy crises and the energy crisis of 1973 resulted in much higher oil prices and much higher prices for other fuels as well. Between one thought October

1973 and January 1974 oil prices went up by a factor of 4 or so and you saw oil prices going up a lot more throughout the 1970s. Oil was used a lot for generating electricity back then. And naturally the price of electricity went up too as the cost went up. So that was obviously a major problem. These You mention the fact that these large power plants in the 1970s showed problems not only didn't they get more heat fission they got a lot more expensive to build. And the reason companies were building more power plants was because they expected the growth rate of electricity usage to increase as it had previously since World War 2 until the 1970s the growth rate of electric consumption was about 7 percent per year. That means that every 10 years usage doubles. That's a huge very fast growth

rate much faster than the gross national product much faster than any other fuel use. And part of the reason of course is because electricity is a very versatile type of energy. So you have this huge growth rate of this huge anticipated growth rate. People companies were building these big power plants and they were no longer cheap. They were very very expensive. There were lots of problems especially with nuclear power plants. So as these new power plants came online there was extra pressure to raise the cost raise the price of electricity. So you have fuel prices going up and the pressure to raise prices. You have these expensive power plants coming online. And that's more pressure for higher priced electricity. And the utility commissions the regulators were in the middle. Because you had customers saying we don't want higher priced electricity you're supposed to protect us. And the utility companies are saying if you don't give us higher prices prices

we're going to go bankrupt and we're not going to be able to provide electricity. So those are some of the problems that you started seeing in the 70s and in the 70s I argue you see the roots of deregulation forces in the 80s and 90s. Yeah. Well let's I think probably I should introduce Again our guest for this part of focus we're speaking with Richard Hirsch. He's professor of history and of science and technology studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and state university in the major area of his teaching research and writing is utility electric utility deregulation. And I did mention one book and he's done a lot of other writing on the subject. The book if you're interested in delving into this subject in some depth one book you might look at is titled power loss and the origins of deregulation and restructuring in the American electric utility system published by the MIT Press and discusses some of the issues there. We here have have given the thumbnail given you have thumbnail sketch of

ugly questions of course are welcome 3 3 3 w y l l toll free 800 to 2 to W while M. Well as and as a result of the energy crisis of the 70s this was during the Carter administration that the president among other things encouraged conservation which I'm sure also put additional pressure on the electric utility companies because the demand for electricity went down so that was an even greater problem for them. But one of the things that was that was interesting here that really set the stage for deregulation and maybe in a way that wasn't really intended this was sort of an unintended consequence I think was the public utility regulatory policies Act of 1978 right. And. Maybe you can talk a little bit about just how it is that this what the results of this were and how this really started to lead a lot of people to question the idea of the regulated monopoly for the utility companies and whether in

fact there was any real reason for that to continue. Sure the public utility regulatory policies act affectionately affectionately known as purpose was one of President Carter's major legislative initiatives in 1977 when he came into office. He wanted to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil he didn't want to see the United States. Into another energy crisis like in 1973 he had a big plan. That he pushed on to Congress. Congress didn't like all the elements of the plan but what one element that did come out of it along with the five or four others was this lost purpose. Purpose was designed to streamline it and to make more logical the types of rate structures that we have for paying for electricity in other words the rate structures that used to

exist in many cases discovered to discourage conservation and energy efficiency. They said they they were designed to encourage people to use more electricity rather than less. That didn't seem to make sense to President Carter and his advisors. And part of the law was set up were designed to discourage these types of rate structures. But there was a tiny part of the law which no one really thought was very important and it provided encouragement for non utility companies to produce electricity and heat at the same time. And these companies would use. Small scale technology small scale steam turbans and gas turbans which I'll talk about in a moment. And in the process of making electricity they also produced a lot of waste heat. And the deal here was that if you if you as a company use that waste heat for industrial processes or for heating up

greenhouses or anything else then you would be allowed to sell your excess electricity to a utility company and the utility company would be required to buy that electricity at pretty favorable rates for the generator and use that electricity and send it on the grid to all other customers. Well the. Impact The unintentional impact of this law was to encourage a lot of co-generation. That's what this process is called making electricity and steam and the beauty of it of course is that you can get double duty out of your energy expenditure out of your one pound of coal Let's say you produce. You take 33 percent of that and you use and you make electricity out of that and then you have another 10 or 15 percent of that coal that becomes heat. And that is used for industrial purposes as well. Therefore you would get 40 to 50 percent energy output useful energy output out of

your initial fuel input. Well that's a lot better than electric utilities did they were getting about 33 to 40 percent fuel efficiency. So this part of the law is designed to increase overall energy efficiency in the American economy and with the incentives that the federal government gave and several states gave. There was a big push for development of new technologies that could do this cogeneration. One of those technologies was renewable technology and that actually is a whole bunch of technologies including wind turbines. There was a huge development of wind wind turbine technology especially on California lots of research and development. And over the 80s you saw the price of. The cost of producing energy with Winter been dropped from about 20 cents per kilowatt hour to about five cents per kilowatt hour. And that made the electricity from wind turbines become competitive with. Jet

conventionally generated electricity out in California and in a few other places. These incentives also helped spur the development of the gas. Turban cogeneration basically a gas turban is a jet engine that uses natural gas and these things improved dramatically during the 80s and 90s and produced electricity relatively cheaply as well as steam or heat that could be used for industrial processes combining with these improvements in the technology especially those that used natural gas. Was the decline in the price of natural gas natural gas started to be deregulated as an industry in the nineteen 80s and as it was deregulated there was a lot more exploration a lot more natural gas was found and the price of a lot of natural gas declined. So these code generating companies that are using natural gas turbine

generators also they saw their technologies becoming cheaper and more efficient and they saw the raw fuel input price go down as well. And in California and elsewhere some of these companies were able to produce electricity for something like three cents per kilowatt hour and that compared to 10 to 12 cents per kilowatt hour at some of the most expensive nuclear power plants. The reason all this is important is because. In the regulated environment the idea is that the natural monopoly utility can produce electricity more cheaply than can competitors a bunch of competitors. But we're beginning to see as a result of this flaw a bunch of non utility companies out there that can produce electricity for much cheaper than the utility could and that made people think hey wait a minute maybe the utility company isn't a natural monopoly after all because of course these other companies are producing electricity

cheaper. And if it's not a natural monopoly then why are we regulating it in the first place. So that was sort of an intellectual academic and sometimes political rationale for getting rid of regulation. We know that we tend to think of deregulation as being a Republican sort of. Through Z as M and perhaps the golden age of deregulation having been the regen years but certainly these this movement did begin under President Carter and then really continued under Reagan and Bush. And I think that it was it was during the Bush administration that the big significant effort to deregulate utilities came and maybe one of the first things or maybe one of the important things that happened here was the was the opening up of the grid in in the respect that now instead of just being a completely closed system that is you know my local power company supplied me

with power over their lines and nobody else could have access to the lines now. What the government was saying is that that in fact they had to open that up so that theoretically if I wanted to get my power from a company in say Indiana that lines had to be made open so that then that electricity could come to me from Indiana. Other then from whoever the local supplier that I had was and then of course this gets us then that's the step that you have to take so that you can get to the point where first it we've seen big time power users can get their power any place that they want and there and then from there the next step is for residential customers to be able to do the same thing but for those things to happen the first of all the this the grid had to had to open up. That's right. I'm impressed you're quite on top of these things. DAVID That's right. I should let me just make one clarification. Sure than Carter did not intend I don't think for the electric utility industry to

become deregulated but he was associated with deregulation in general. He in fact was the president to started airline deregulation and he in fact did quite a bit for deregulation also the natural gas and oil industries. Two it wasn't just the this the Reagan administration but jumping ahead then about 10 years or so. You start seeing wholesale deregulation and wholesale competition in the electric utility industry as you point out. That was partly a result of President George Bush's administration when he came into office in 1989 he was disturbed that the United States was importing a huge amount of oil even more oil on a percentage basis than we were importing back in 1973 when we had the first energy crisis. So he set up a group of commission or committee rather to to look at how we could reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Of course other events motivated him even more to look into this matter the Persian Gulf War which ended in 1991 was in many people's view a war to make sure that the United States. Maintained its traditional supplies of oil abroad but of course what kind of oil policy is this if we have to go to war to protect our oil reserves or oil resources and of course they're not ours. We just depended on them a lot. So after the war Congress President Bush sent to Congress a National Energy Policy Act which was only passed in 1992. It dealt mostly with oil and other resources. But there were provisions in there for electricity. By 1992 the American electric utility industry had moved away from the use of oil as a large energy resource and instead of using oil with that of the industry was using coal well.

Even so there were reasons to try to make the electric utility industry more. Efficient and one way to do it. Many people thought was to introduce competition into the industry. After all we had increased competition in deregulation in the telecommunications industry in the trucking industry railroad industry airlines industry Securities Industry and on and on. And there were lots of efficiencies and lots of economic benefits to customers. So why not try this with electric utilities. The 1992 National Energy Policy Act allowed there for the first time to be wholesale competition so that companies could. Could compete to sell electricity to the utilities to the. Municipal utilities too. State authorities and the like. And this was supposed to be the first step

in introducing competition into the electric utility industry. The second step would be competition on the retail spaces on the on the retail level such that individual customers whether it be whether they be large industrial customers like General Motors or individual homeowners those customers could then make contracts with suppliers of electricity with generators of electricity whether it's the traditional utility or someone else. Now the 1992 law did not authorize retail competition but it did allow the states to decide whether they wanted to introduce retail competition within the states. And by 1993 94 you start seeing states. Studying the possibility of introducing competition on the retail level by 1996 you have a couple of states passing laws

allowing for retail deregulation. California was not the first state but it was one of the States in September 1996 that passed a deregulation law and open competition on the retail level started in March of 1998 in California. Brings us up to the beginnings of a real competitive retail deregulation. We and we're at the point here where you have just about 20 minutes left in the program and we have a caller I want to get them in and we'll. Will continue to talk about the subject and I want to again introduce our guest We're speaking with Richard Hirsch. He's professor of history and science and technology studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and his research specialty is this very topic we're talking about here deregulation of the American electric utility system. He's written quite a bit on the subject including the book that I mentioned power loss which is published by the MIT Press questions welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5

5 toll free 800 W while also 3 3 3 W I L L and toll free 800 1:58 WLM. Here's a caller in I believe in Urbana on our line 1. Hello. Oh yes very intensely informative. Oh. So today I was wondering if your guest had much to say about the potential impact of deregulation as far as fire mental issues. And I had a couple questions. First of all more more specific questions. One is I read in The New Scientist a while back that they were arguing that hydroelectric dams are actually very anti environmental not very environmentally friendly that. Apparently the stagnant water

that is that they produce give off a lot of cover dioxide methane and so they're very silly. That's 20 times as potent the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide methane that is and the decaying vegetation apparently related to dams. Makes them very very environmentally unfriendly and the thing I was wondering is again a common environmental angle is I saw a graph by the Worldwatch Institute. Which showed that wind energy capacity in the rest of the world is going up almost exponentially. And whereas it's been very flat in the U.S. and that was one if you could say a word or two about how the rest of the world is managing to accommodate wind energy you know I understand there's a lot

of noise involved. They don't like the looks of it. I was just curious if you could say a couple words about that but in general I'm looking for it's a little bit of information about. What you think the impact of deregulation is would be environmentally and I guess. OK thanks for the call. I do believe that is something that you've Professor Hirsch You have written on and looked at. Sure I can talk generally about a couple of these issues a lot of environmental advocates were concerned that deregulation would reduce incentives for energy efficiency renewable energies renewable energy systems and the like. The reason for that is because under a regulated environment the regulators required utilities often to do research on wind turbines for example sort of solar photovoltaics and other things like that. And the utilities did that partly because they knew they could recover their costs from the customers

and partly because it looked good for them and that was fine when the industry started deregulating of course utility companies wanted to reduce their costs as much as possible so that they could sell electricity more competitively. And in this rush to deregulate many utilities got rid of their efforts to do energy efficiency and renewable energy. Now in California and elsewhere the legislation has been written to try to compensate for that. But from friends in California I'm told they didn't do a wonderful job there so energy efficiency and renewable energy sort of went by the wayside at least to a certain degree. As far as wind turbans go here's a technology that is looking extremely good right now especially in California. The price for the cost of generating electricity with wind turbans is between 3 and 5 cents per kilowatt

hour. And of course because there is no fuel expense that price for that cost is fairly fixed and therefore if you if you are utility company it wouldn't hurt to have a good chunk of wind capacity at your disposal you're hedging against price increases or cost increases in the future. Other countries have picked up on wind turbine technology a lot more than the United States. Those incentives that I told you about as a result of her basically ended in the mid to late nineteen eighties and they weren't renewed. The 1992 National Environment National Energy Policy Act did have some incentives for wind but many of the wind companies in the United States went under in the late 80s and 90s. In other countries such as Denmark the government provides lots of incentives and some of the biggest and most successful wind companies wind turbine companies

do exist in Denmark and they of course export to the United States and elsewhere. The business the wind business in the United States at least is very dependent on the cost of energy so that when alternative energy is I'm sorry when traditional energy supplies like coal and oil and natural gas go up in price them wind turban companies have a competitive advantage. But until about a year ago natural gas prices were low enough so that in California and elsewhere the natural gas burning gas turban companies or companies that used gas turbans were able to produce for less than the cost of wind energy. I think you may see wind becoming a lot more popular in the United States. The wind resources especially in the Midwest are remarkable and they are consistent and they're just right for wind turbines and you see in Minnesota in Iowa and elsewhere.

Companies building more and more wind farms. Some of the newer wind turbines are a bit less objectionable from an environmental point of view. Instead of building like a hundred or even a thousand relatively small wind turbans. The new design is for a larger wind turbans with larger blades and the blades don't turn as quickly so that birds apparently have a better chance of avoiding being voiding or being hit by the blades. So they may be. Becoming a lot more common a lot more popular in the United States. I know that I didn't answer all your questions there but I hope it gave you a flavor of what might be coming in terms of wind at least. I want to make sure that before we find ourselves that I give you the chance to talk a little bit about what has been happening recently in California as you certainly mention California was not the first state to give

consumers the opportunity to choose but certainly because everybody was dealing with the really the same issues and I'm sure because California is so big it's it is a natural case study. We have been hearing recently about the difficulties they've been having and people point the figure at deregulation. Then some people say well no it's not. It's not deregulation persay it's the way the deregulation was handled pretty. The fact that the wholesale rates continue to be regulated but the rates to individual consumers wear it and then some people would say well no it doesn't really even have anything to do with that at all it has nothing to do with deregulation. When you look at the difficulties they've had They're in the power shortages and rolling blackouts. What role did deregulation has deregulation played in causing the difficulties they're having now. That's of course of course the question of the hour. I think the

problem is not that deregulation in principle is a bad thing but that the deregulation in California missed a few points and there are some there were some problems there that were not necessarily imitated elsewhere. There are currently 24 states plus the District of Columbia that have deregulation laws on the books or revised regulations to essentially deregulate the retail side of the business and many of the other states are not having the problems that California is having. It seems like the major problem in terms of the way that they restructured the system in California was that they allowed for wholesale competition. And wholesale prices that could go anywhere they wanted. And yet the retail prices were fixed or kept the legislation of 1996 required that the price of electricity to residential consumers for example go down by 10 percent and they weren't allowed to go up until

after the transition in 2002 had ended. Well the problem there is that if demand goes up and sorry if if the wholesale price of electricity goes up and you can't pass those price increases onto customers then the customers don't have the economic signals they need to cut back on consumption or to find more energy efficient ways to use electricity and therefore they'll just keep on using electricity as if there were no problems. Of course the big problem is that wholesale prices and in the California market. Have gone up dramatically to the extent of the utility companies buying electricity let's say at about 25 cents per kilowatt hour and selling it for 12 cents per kilowatt hour. If you do that for too long you lose a lot of money. And indeed the California utilities are the two major utilities. Their claim to have been losing about 12 billion dollars and that's a lot of money. You can stay in

business too long and if you sell for less than your cost. But it seems like that fixed price that fixed price for customers was indeed one of the problems you have. Again wholesale prices that can go anywhere but customer prices that are fixed and that of course inhibits good economic signals being given to customers. There are some other problems too. There is talk that the companies that are supplying electricity into the California grid may have been gaming a bit. They may have been withholding some electricity so that there would be some. But I'm sorry so that the demand for electricity would be much higher than the supply therefore the price would go up and therefore they would be getting more money for the electricity that they eventually supplied. I can't say that I can't speak

authoritatively about that. One of the problems in California is that the market for selling electricity is pretty much kept in pretty much secret so that the suppliers of electricity. Provide bid to the power exchange but the power exchange doesn't necessarily provide all that information to the other bidders. And ultimately you don't have a lot of information getting around. So people are working in the dark and unfortunately markets need information to work properly so. Something's going to have to happen there. Another problem too with California was that the that the suppliers of electricity provided electricity to a spot market to a market where people would buy the electricity on a day to day basis pretty much and they were not allowed to pick the suppliers were not allowed to offer long term contracts to utilities and customers.

So a customer could not say I'd like a certain amount of electricity for a year ahead of the year ahead of time and I'm willing to pay you a certain amount and that rate is fixed by doing that you can sort of hedge the price of electricity if electricity goes way up in price at least you have a fixed price for some of your electricity. That was not allowed. So there were a bunch of strange market mechanisms which were which everyone hoped would lead to lower price electricity. But in fact this past summer and fall and now winter led to much higher prices. Well you know I'm I'm sorry to say that we're at the end of the time there's a lot more we could discuss and we're simply going to have to leave it there perhaps at some other time way particularly as we kind of see how things continue to go we might come back and revisit the issue. But for the moment we want to say to you Professor Hirsch thank you very much for giving us some of your time today. My pleasure. Our guest Richard Hershey is Professor of History and Science and Technology Studies at a

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and state university and if you're interested in exploring some of the background of the issue you can look for his book Power loss the origins of deregulation and restructuring in the American electric utility system published by the MIT Press.