When I first went to work in our industry, annual electric load growth was around eight percent. We were always building something – generation and transmission mostly (kept those distribution people on a tight budget, never knew why). The strategy was simple, invest big, build big, collect the return on invested capital and then build even bigger!
But those days are gone. The U.S. Energy Information Administration tells us that we’ll be around one percent growth for the next decade or so. So, how are we going to make money? Well, right now we’re rebuilding the infrastructure. Lines, plants, phasing out coal.
But that activity won’t last forever. Where are we headed 10 or 15 years down the road?
