Özden-Schilling, Canay (2021). The Current Economy: Electricity Markets and Techno-Economics. California: Stanford University Press.
Electricity is an extraordinary commodity (1)
Electricity is married to its transportation infrastructure—the electric grid—until the day it can be stored, boxed, and loaded up onto trucks. (1)
For at least the second half of the twentieth century, electricity served as a literal textbook example of how there simply could not be markets in certain commodities (2).
The initial investment in infrastructure was simply too high for many competitors to undertake, just like in other businesses considered public utilities—water, natural gas, and mail delivery. (2)