Drawing power from a patchwork: Harnessing a decentralized electricity grid

Much recent scholarship on the U.S. electricity system focuses on challenges from increasing demand, growing complexity, and regulatory complications. While these are formidable, we are also entering a period of immense opportunities for reinvention of this system. Accordingly, this article does not dwell on the difficulties faced by the grid. Instead, it highlights how current trends and structural elements of the U.S. electricity system can be leveraged to create a stronger, future-oriented grid. This paper synthesizes insights from recent National Academies activities to identify opportunities to modernize our electricity system by leveraging its inherently decentralized nature. We first establish how our grid is a decentralized system both technologically and in governance, followed by a synthesis of trends shaping the grid's evolution. The paper concludes with a vision for how policy experimentation can leverage the system's decentralized structure and these trends to create a more reliable, affordable, and sustainable grid.