The man and his gadgets seem to be mandatory subject matter for the early grades and little more.
But where would we be today without illumination? Or recorded sound and moving images? Or the innumerable domestic appliances that make life more comfortable? All these we take for granted.
According to Robert Galvin and Kurt Yeager in their new book "Perfect Power (McGraw Hill, 2009)," Edison is possibly more relevant today than ever.
The former Motorola CEO (Galvin) not only effectively diagnoses an electricity infrastructure in peril, but argues that a restored, efficient grid, one that matches the needs of a digital 21st century society, is possible only through Edison-like invention, innovation and risk-taking.
State-regulated monopolists are the villains, relics of the late 19th century when Edison lost out to Westinghouse in his bid to de-centralize electricity production through "distributed generation."
As a consequence, the big utilities, guaranteed a profit, poorly serve their customers (think rolling brownouts) and fail to make needed (big) investments to upgrade the massive, centralized grid.
The answer, according to Galvin and Yeager, is to open up the electricity distribution market to companies capable of building a "smart grid." Actually, "smart microgrid" is more apt. That's because the authors see renewal as digital, sustainable, reliable, intelligent AND local.
Unleashing the competition in retail electricity distribution would be a high-voltage shock to the status quo, prompting customer-driven service that adds real value, while creating millions of jobs in new companies.
With almost a third of the world's masses living outside the grid and an estimated 6 trillion dollars needed to renew and expand the world's aging power delivery grids over the next 25 years, there is a big job to be done.
http://www.galvinpower.org/
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