What was the design philosophy of power systems in the 20th century?

The entire planning and design philosophy of power systems and regulated utilities in the 20th century presumed that electricity should be available to anyone in essen-tially arbitrary amounts around the clock, at a known and fixed price deemed reason-able by public regulators.

Who should read electric power systems?

With its clear discussion of how electric grids work, Electric Power Systems is appropriate for a broad readership of professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, government agency managers, environmental advocates, and consumers.

Are distributed power systems a radical departure from a centralized power system?

Finally, there are important social and political dimensions of ownership of resources and generation assets. In sum, an electric power system with significant amounts of distributed generation represents a radical departure from the centralized and strictly hierarch-ical power system of the 20th century.

Are electric power systems balancing supply and demand?

Rather, it emphasizes that, owing to their technical characteristics and the reality of their present design, electric power systems pose serious, intrinsic challenges to the balancing of supply and demand at an equilibrium price and quantity.

What is an electric power system?

The hardware of electric power systems represents some of the oldest industrial machinery still in general use today. The fundamental task of transmission and dis-tribution—that is, to connect pieces of conducting metal so as to form electric cir-cuits—remains unchanged, as does a transformer’s job in stepping voltage up and down.

What are the most sensitive aspects of maintaining equilibrium in a power system?

The most sensitive aspects of maintaining equilibrium in a power system happen on the time scale of a fraction of a second, where time is measured in cycles, from a fraction of a cycle to several cycles (one cycle at 60 Hz measures 1/60 of a second or about 16 ms).