Electric Utilities Bibliography

The Electric Utilities and How They Grew

• Brigham, Jay L. Empowering the West: Electrical Politics before FDR, Development of Western Resources. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998.

 

• Friedlander, Amy, and Corporation for National Research Initiatives. Power and Light: Electricity in the U.S. Energy Infrastructure, 1870-1940, History of Infrastructure; v. 3. Reston, Va.: Corporation for National Research Initiatives, 1996.

 

• Hirsh, Richard F., Technology and Transformation in the American Utility Industry. Cambridge, London, New York, Port Chester, Melbourne, Sidney: Cambridge University Press(1989)

Offers analysis of the early success and later stagnation of electric utility industry in U.S. during the twentieth-century.  Describes failure of utilities to accurately forecast technological improvements that would accompany the construction of ever-larger electric generating facilities.

 

• Hughes, Thomas P., Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930. Baltimore, London: The Johns Hopkins University Press(1983).

This history of electrification from 1880 – 1930, compares Chicago, London, and Berlin.  Employs systems theory as organizing framework for study of the growth of a major technology system.  Establishes concept of technological momentum to explain how and why ever larger interconnected power systems became the norm.

 

• Hughes, Thomas Parke, Agatha C. Hughes, Michael Thad Allen, and Gabrielle Hecht. Technologies of Power: Essays in Honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha Chipley Hughes. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001.

 

• Hyman, Leonard S., Andrew S. Hyman, and Robert C. Hyman. America's Electric Utilities: Past, Present, and Future. 7th ed. Vienna, Va.: Public Utilities Reports, 2000.

Overview of history, operation, regulation, and functioning of electric utilities in the United States

 

• Platt, Harold L., The Electric City: Energy and Growth of the Chicago Area, 1880-1930.  Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press (1991)

History of electrification of Chicago from 1880 – 1930, with emphasis on how Samuel Insull shaped the adoption of the technology and how the technology shaped the city.  Offers insight into the origins of rate structures that encouraged power usage in order to increase consumption in certain sectors and balance load on generating facilities.

 

• Rose, Mark H., Cities of Light and Heat, Domesticating Gas and Electricity in Urban America.  University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.

This history traces the development of gas and electric utilities in Denver and Kansas City, and incorporates a more general discussion of technology and society.  Focuses on role of agents of diffusion.  Provides another example of rate structures designed to increase demand and balance load.

 

• Sharlin, Harold , The Making of the Electrical Age. London, New York: Abelard-Schuman (1963).

Offers a history of electrical development of both communications and power, with focus on technical advances along the way.

 

Consumption of Electricity/Demand for Energy

• Nye, David, Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880-1940. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, The MIT Press, (1991)

This review of electrification in U.S. from 1880 – 1940, takes a social history perspective with a focus on the markets for electricity and the relationship between the technology and social constructions of the technology.

 

• Nye, David, Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, The MIT Press, (1997).

Provides a history of energy production and consumption in America, from pre-Columbian period to late twentieth-century, with consideration of future.

 

• Tobey, Ronald C. Technology as Freedom: the New Deal and the Electrical Modernization of the American Home. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

Addresses the role of New Deal programs in promoting electrification of the home.

 

• Goldstein, Carolyn, “From Service to Sales: Home Economics in Light and Power, 1920-1940.” Technology and Culture 38 (Jan. 1997): 121-152.

Provides insight into role of female home economists employed by manufacturers in building the market for electricity and electrical devices in the home.

 

Sources of Energy for Electricity

• Asmus, Peter. Reaping the Wind: How Mechanical Wizards, Visionaries, and Profiteers Helped Shape our Energy Future. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2001.

 

• Billington, David P., and Donald C. Jackson. Big Dams of the New Deal Era : a Confluence of Engineering and Politics. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006.

 

• Brooks, Karl Boyd: Public Power, Private Dams: The Hell's Canyon High Dam Controversy. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006.

 

• Lovins, Amory B. Soft Energy Paths: Toward a Durable Peace. Harmondsworth; New York [etc.]: Penguin, 1977.

 

• Righter, Robert W. Wind Energy in America: a History. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.

 

• Rudolph, Richard, and Scott Ridley, Power Struggle: The One Hundred Year War Over Electricity.  1986

Discussion of public versus private ownership of electric power systems, especially as it takes place during the latter half of the twentieth-century as the industry has adopted nuclear power and rates have increased.

 

• Simeons, Charles. Hydro-power: the Use of Water as an Alternative Source of Energy. 1st ed. Oxford ; New York: Pergamon Press, 1980.

 

• Willingham, William F.: Water Power in the "Wilderness": The History of Bonneville Lock and Dam. Portland, Or.: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Portland District,  1987.

 

 

• Wheeler, William Bruce, and Michael J. McDonald. TVA and the Tellico Dam, 1936-1979: a Bureaucratic Crisis in Post-Industrial America. 1st ed. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986.

 

Economics, Deregulation, Public Policy

 

• Bonbright, James Cummings, Albert L. Danielsen, and David R. Kamerschen. Current Issues in Public-Utility Economics: Essays in Honor of James C. Bonbright. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1983.

Marks changes in electric utility regulation in the 1970s.

 

• Brennan, Timothy J., Karen L. Palmer, and Salvador Martinez. Alternating Currents : Electricity Markets and Public Policy. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 2002.

 

• Fenn, Scott. America's Electric Utilities: Under Siege and in Transition. New York: Praeger, 1984.

 

• Hirsh, Richard F., Power Loss: The Origins of Deregulation and Restructuring in the American Utility System. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press (1999).

History of the regulation and deregulation of the electric power industry.

 

• Jacobson, Charles David. Ties that Bind: Economic and Political Dilemmas of Urban Utility Networks, 1800-1990. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000.

 

• Messing, Marc, H. Paul Friesema, and David Morell. Centralized Power: the Politics of Scale in Electricity Generation. Cambridge, Mass.: Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain, 1979.

 

• Munson, Richard. From Edison to Enron: the Business of Power and What it Means for the Future of Electricity. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2005.

Documents the growth and development of private electric utilities from early technological advances through phases of regulation and deregulation.

 

• Wilson, James Q. The Politics of Regulation. New York: Basic Books, 1980.

Addresses the effects of the oil embargo on electric utilities.

Electricity and the Environment

 

• Durant, Robert F. When Government Regulates Itself: EPA, TVA, and Pollution Control in the 1970s. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985.

 

• Kahan, Archie M. Acid Rain : Reign of Controversy. Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum, 1986.

 

• Melosi, Martin V. Coping with Abundance: Energy and Environment in Industrial America. 1st ed. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985.

Addresses electric utilities in context of overall analysis of America as energy producer and consumer.  Further addresses relationship of energy development and use to the environment.

 

• Roberts, Marc J., and Jeremy S. Bluhm. The Choices of Power: Utilities Face the Environmental Challenge. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981.

Study of change in decision–making at six electric utilities over a twenty year period during which environmental considerations balanced economic and technical issues. 

 

• Smeloff, Ed, and Peter Asmus. Reinventing Electric Utilities: Competition, Citizen Action, and Clean Power. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1997.

 

• Wellstone, Paul David, and Barry M. Casper. Powerline: the First Battle of America's Energy War. 1st ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

Recounts the efforts of farmers and their supporters to stop construction of a high-voltage transmission line across Minnesota during the 1970s.  Connects environmentalism and energy policy as bureaucrats, utility executives, politicians, and the public grapple with the regulatory process and electricity demand in the state.

 

Case Studies

 

• Chandler, William U. The Myth of TVA: Conservation and Development in the Tennessee Valley, 1933-1983. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Pub. Co., 1984.

 

• Durden, Robert Franklin. Electrifying the Piedmont Carolinas: the Duke Power Company, 1904-1997. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2001.

 

• Hargrove, Erwin C. Prisoners of Myth: the Leadership of the Tennessee Valley Authority, 1933-1990. 1st ed. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2001.

 

• Pratt, Joseph. A Managerial History of Consolidated Edison, 1936 -1981. Houston, Texas: The Consolidated Edison Company of New York, 1988.

 

• Rothman, Hal, and Mike Davis. The Grit Beneath the Glitter: Tales from the Real Las Vegas. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

 

• Williams, James C. Energy and the Making of Modern California. 1st ed. Akron, Ohio: University of Akron Press, 1997.

 

Aesthetics of Electrification

 

• Eugene Levy, “The Aesthetics of Power: High Voltage Transmission Systems and the American Landscape.”  Technology and Culture 38 (July 1997): 575-607.

Discussion of the aesthetic issues related to transmission of electricity and efforts by the public, designers, and some members of the industry to improve the appearance of transmission lines.