Meredith Angwin
Former utility chemist.
“Most of this grid is run by physical laws. You can't change them. … You can break them and then they'll break the grid. But what I mean is, you cannot change them just by writing a piece of paper. On the other hand, the policy grid is a set of pieces of paper.”
Energy News Beat · Climate & Energy · October 2026
Angwin was explaining her idea that there are two grids: the physical one of wires, substations and rotating machinery, and the "policy grid" of net metering rules, renewable standards and certificates. She says the policy grid is mostly about how the physical grid gets paid. Her complaint is that news coverage describes the paper one, so people take it for the real thing.
Transcript
it was at a church. And we don't really know why it was at a church, but because it was originally planned to be at a school. And Alex had, of course, Alex and his co-worker Fox, they're the founders of the New York Energy Alliance. Alex and Fox had done everything to clear to get to the school. And all of a sudden, the school decided that it wasn't going to allow them to use the school. And meanwhile, they'd made all kinds of arrangements and so forth and so on. But luckily, they were able to get a local church to host it.
Oh, that's way cool. One of the key points that you have on here, you've got several slides. And tell us what you were thinking when you had the discussion going on here with two grids, fiscal and policy.
Well, I have a theory that there are three. Well, it's beyond a theory. I have a theory that there are three fatal errors that a grid can make, which I call the fatal trifecta. And one of them is putting in too many renewables without really thinking about how they're going to be backed up or where the inertia and the other types of support that regular rotating machinery gives to a grid. So at any rate, I say, look, you know, the trouble is that there are two grids. Real grid. You can look out your window and you can see it. You can see a transmission, you can see a substation, you can see linemen sometimes. You are an end user, and most of this grid is run by physical laws. You can't change them. You know, you can't, you can break them and then they'll break the grid. But what I mean is, you cannot change them just by writing a piece of paper. On the other hand, the policy grid is a set of pieces of paper. It is paper that requires metering, renewable portfolio standards, aims at net zero within a certain number of years, sets up renewable energy certificates and so forth. It's a whole bunch of paper. And when you get right down to it, it's mostly about how the physical grid is paid. So, for example, if you net metering allows home solar to get more per kilowatt hour than some other source does, you know. So, that sort of thing, it's all about how the grid is paid. And unfortunately, one of the things is that the policy grid is what's usually described, usually reported on. And I can see why nobody wants to know about the phases of electricity on the grid. I mean, they really, if you really want to put people to sleep, let's go there, but we won't. But what I mean is the policy grid can be explained to anybody who's used to following any other policy argument, which means that everybody thinks it's the grid. I mean, in other words, if you're just an end user and reading the paper, you may not even think about the physical grid because everything's going to be about changes to the policy grid.
And you don't notice it until it's not working.
That's right.
And then the policy, you bring up probably the single biggest issue that I think we face right now. And that is people don't understand that the renewable wind and solar with the additional burden that they put on balancing authorities because natural gas turbines either spin up or nuclear turbines spin up or coal turbines, and that puts extra wear and tear on those turbines to the tune of millions upon millions of dollars that grid utilities have to spend additional money, which goes to the grid funds, which is consumers, because spinning up a turbine and spinning it down and spinning it up and spinning it down is very expensive because of the wear and tear on those turbines. We now have a five-year wait on turbines.
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