Welcome to My Substack
Welcome to my Substack! I am a lawyer (retired in June 2023) with extensive experience in the energy space. I was in private practice for almost 40 years, mostly at the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, one of the largest and highly rated law firms in the world. Our energy group was just starting up when I joined in 1985, but over the years grew into the top-rated energy practice. In 2018 I left Skadden and started working at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) with my friend James Danly, who had been appointed General Counsel. When James was named one of the Commissioners, and later Chairman, I joined him as his Senior Legal Advisor. Later, I moved to the FERC Solicitor’s Office, where I defended FERC’s orders in the federal courts of appeals, which are the second highest courts in the country.
In the course of those 40 years, I worked in many different areas of the energy world, including natural gas pipeline financing and regulation, oil production and refining, hydroelectric licensing, and—most relevant to this newsletter—electricity. My electric experience included financing small independently owned generation projects, organization of the electric industry, development of competitive electric markets, measuring and mitigating market power, and approvals of electric utility mergers. My representation involved several different perspectives, including those of consumers, generation developers and owners, small utilities, large utilities, transmission companies, Regional Transmission Operators, and regulators.
After I retired, I decided to write a book, tentatively titled (until changed by a publisher if I get that far) The Essential Machine: How the US Power Grid Works and How it Must Change. The book is intended to explain how the grid works, and the significant challenges in integrating solar and wind facilities if the US were to move to a low or no carbon economy. The book is descriptive in nature, it does not either support or criticize the transition that is ongoing as we speak.
I am writing this book for two reasons. One is I think that it will, if published, provide useful information about how the grid works and how that is changing as more solar and wind are constructed. I do not think that grid operations are well understood by many advocates, or opponents, of transitioning to a carbon free economy. But even if my boo is never published, I love to write, and writing this book has helped me to learn and think about a subject that I already know quite a bit about. I am only about one-fourth of the way through my writing so it will be some time before it is published, if ever.
I am starting this Substack because my friend, and long-time colleague (but not my relative) John Estes pointed me to a book by Meredith Angwin, called Shorting the Grid, which also is about the grid, as well as her Substack called Electric Grandma. I haven’t read Meredith’s book yet (I have ordered it), but I have looked at her Substack, as well as some others she mentions, and found them to be very interesting.
Although I enjoyed reading the posts that I found, I have a somewhat different view about the grid from what I saw in those posts. I thought that it would be fun to present my own views on my own Substack. Like my book, I look forward to doing this to stay engaged and to keep learning. I also hope that other people’s posts will help sharpen my thinking on the various issues in my book.
My goal for this page is to foster an informed exchange of views on issues involving the grid. I hope that there is some disagreement. If everyone agrees on a subject then either the subject is not interesting or we will have failed to fully explore it. But please keep the discussion focused on the issues, supported if possible, by facts. No name calling or ad hominem attacks.
I am starting my Substack off with two posts that you may find interesting. Feel free to add your posts in response. I will add some more posts in the future in between working on my book and doing other things that retired people do (like traveling to all the places I always wanted to visit)