Political Quotes

“That is absolutely correct. That I will touch on in a moment. That potentially changes the relationship with utilities and with the grid system. This is a good thing. This provides competition. Our whole system is based upon competition. Everybody here talks about the power of the market. That is what we are talking about here. It strengthens the grid by making it more resilient because power is going in two directions. We had a huge ice storm in Maine in 1998. The power went off. Everybody lost their power--600,000 people. The people who had generators in their homes could make their own power, but those were very few people. Now we are talking about a grid that is not wholly dependent upon a central powerplant but power goes in both directions. I am on the Intelligence and Armed Services Committees. This is a national security issue. One of the great vulnerabilities of this country is a cyber attack on critical infrastructure. To the extent this infrastructure is self-healing and distributed, it is less subject to a catastrophic attack. It saves money because it saves money on distribution and powerplants if people are making their own investments and you don't not need the level of transmission and distribution wires. Of course it could substantially reduce our dependency upon fossil fuels. There are two possible reactions to this from the utility companies. One is to adopt, adjust, and reinvent themselves, as companies have done. I remember New England Tel.…”