Superpower: One Man's Quest to Transform American Energy

by Russell Gold

Meet Michael Skelly, the man boldly harnessing wind energy that could power America’s future and break its fossil fuel dependence in this “essential, compelling look into the future of the nation’s power grid” (Bryan Burrough, author of The Big Rich). The United States is in the midst of an energy transition. We have fallen out of love with dirty fossil fuels and want to embrace renewable energy sources like wind and solar. A transition from a North American power grid that is powered mostly by fossil fuels to one that is predominantly clean is feasible, but it would require a massive building spree—wind turbines, solar panels, wires, and billions of dollars would be needed. Enter Michael Skelly, an infrastructure builder who began working on wind energy in 2000 when many considered the industry a joke. Eight years later, Skelly helped build the second largest wind power company in the United States—and sold it for $2 billion. Wind energy was no longer funny—it was well on its way to powering more than 6% of electricity in the United States. Award-winning journalist, Russel Gold tells Skelly’s story, which in many ways is the story of our nation’s evolving relationship with renewable energy. Gold illustrates how Skelly’s company, Clean Line Energy, conceived the idea for a new power grid that would allow sunlight where abundant to light up homes in the cloudy states thousands of miles away, and take wind from the Great Plains to keep air conditioners running in Atlanta. Thrilling, provocative, and important, Superpower is a fascinating look at America’s future.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Business, Environment, Climate Change, Economics, Politics

337 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 25, 2019

About the author

Born: In Philly.
Married: Yes.
Kids: Yup.
Facial hair: Changes with the season.
Reads: Modern fiction (generally 1970+) and lots of nonfiction.
Other: Long-suffering Philadelphia sports fan.

Reviews

[Julie Morton · Rating 3 out of 5]

PROUD NIMBY
I am the “Julie” in Chapter 12 of this book. I acquired electrical transmission line right-of-way for a major utility serving Arkansas and Oklahoma for 10 years. So, I have actual experience in this realm, unlike either Mr. Gold or Mr. Skelly. Mr. Gold paints Skelly, et al with a gilded brush. That is not what I saw. The hundreds of us who fought to kill this needless project saw haughty, condescending, Ivy League types who thought they were the smartest guys in the room. Clearly, they weren’t. I watched them side-step simple questions at numerous landowner and state legislative meetings. Gold was not there. Instead, he believes the “Skelly spin” which we saw ad nauseam. I had no personal land affected. As I told Gold, repeatedly, my primary objection was environmental; the destruction of 8,000 acres of Arkansas’s fragile, unique environment. The 200-foot right-of-way (not 100 as Gold states) would have crossed multiple nationally recognized rivers, 2 historical trails, the extremely biodiverse, protected Crowley’s Ridge and the Mississippi Flyway, the largest migratory bird corridor in North America. The line would have wiped out hundreds of acres of trees. Scientists now tell us that trees are our best hope for combating climate change. If preserving those 8,000 acres and hundreds of trees makes me that hackneyed, cliché, NIMBY, then so be it. I am proud to be one.

Arkansans were being used as guinea pigs in the first-time use of a law that would allow Clean Line to exercise eminent domain. After thousands of comments from individuals, organizations and state agencies, the DOE set out pre-conditions before they would allow the use eminent domain. Skelly’s group never achieved any of those pre-conditions. The fact that Skelly thought his people were so exceptional that they could buy 90-95% of this line without condemnation shows how ridiculously overconfident they were and how little they knew about building transmission lines. Gold and Skelly try to compare this needless line to the interstate highway system. There is no comparison. There was much shared sacrifice by the states in building the interstate system, so that all could benefit. In this case, only a handful of people were being asked to sacrifice so that Skelly and his investors could pad their already bulging pockets. Skelly admitted to Gold that this line was not about being “green”, it was about filthy lucre. And yet, Skelly has wrapped himself in a “clean” box and tied a big “green” ribbon on top and most of the reviewers herein have bought it. That is exactly what Skelly counted on.

Each area of the country has access to its own renewable sources. Every coast has an ocean where, according to the DOE, the wind blows more consistently and harder than on land. Offshore wind is now being brought directly onshore to the exact areas where needed without long, dangerous transmission lines. The Southwest has abundant sunshine and hundreds of acres of desert could be used for solar farms to serve those customers, without long extension cords. Let the people who will benefit make the sacrifice. Don’t ask people who will see virtually no benefit to give up their ways of life for which they have saved, toiled and fought so that someone in some far away big city can pat themselves on the back about how environmentally correct they are.

I found it interesting that, after the publication of Mr. Gold’s book, he did a series of articles for the Wall Street Journal about PG&E and the California wildfires. Guess what he found to be the culprit? Large, outdated, steel tower lines. The very types of lines he lauded Skelly for trying to build. The fact is, this line was outdated technology before it ever started. There are far less destructive ways to upgrade our grid. Companies like SOO Green Renewable Rail are, right now, planning HVDC, underground lines in existing railroad rights-of-way. No environmentally devastating, unsightly lines to blight our beautiful vistas; no new rights-of-way required; no permitting issues and only one owner with whom to negotiate. Government lands where there are no houses can be used. But, when we asked Clean Line about this, they said it was “too hard”. Better, I guess, to spend eight years and millions of OPM with nothing to show for it. And yet, Gold and Skelly try to paint this debacle as a success instead of the abject failure it was.

Mr. Gold has crossed the country trying to say that we did not understand climate change. We live in tornado alley where the storms are increasing in frequency and ferocity. And, in the past few weeks, we have seen a record, devastating, 500 year flood on the Arkansas River. Of course we understand it; it is right in front of our eyes. Our objection was not to alternative energies. Arkansas has been using wind power from Oklahoma for years. New solar installations are announced nearly weekly and our largest one is being planned in eastern Arkansas. Our objection was to needless destruction for a line with no customers. The lines on which I worked were built out of need, not greed. There was a lot of greed on this line, but no need. Gold doesn’t bother to mention that, not only the TVA wasn’t interested, neither was the Southern Company, who knows a little about the grid as well. The only ones who saw the need were Skelly and his fellow profiteers. I fear Gold has drunk Skelly’s snake oil by the gallons. We in Arkansas didn’t drink one drop. Instead, we sent Skelly runnin’ back to Texas, dragging the carcass of his dead project behind him. A hero, I think not!

[Trey Shipp · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating, fast-paced and important story.

Gold has written the inside story of Michael Skelly, a driven entrepreneur with a huge goal: building thousands of miles of transmission lines to carry cheap, renewable energy across several states to where it’s needed. The project would require billions of dollars in spending before earning a dime, but raising money would be the easy part. Convincing landowners, state governments and utility commissions to approve the project would ultimately be Skelly’s quest.

This book succeeds in many ways:
• It's a fast-paced story that is impossible to put down.
• Has interesting characters like an Oxford-educated Iraqi-Jew who ran a punk-rock record label before going into the oil business. (He decorated his Houston conference room with a poster of Johnny Rotten.)
• You don’t have to be an electrical engineer to understand how the grid works. The author conveys the scientific parts with simple analogies.
• Along the way, we learn how far renewable energy has come.
• It’s a good startup story. Actually, it’s several startup stories.
• Ultimately it teaches us about the rewards of pursuing a worthy life.


ARE WE DOOMED TO A 1950s ELECTRICAL GRID?

The good news is that our country respects individual property rights, local government rights, and limited federal power. The bad news is that we can’t seem to resolve those competing interests to replace aging infrastructure. Our electrical grid is the worst of any developed nation.

The US has plenty of sun and wind to generate energy. We have plenty of investors with billions of dollars they want to invest in energy projects. But we are stuck. Like the immense amount of clean energy Michael Skelly wanted to release from the Oklahoma panhandle, our country’s greatness needs a new transmission line to get out.

[L.A. Starks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many thanks to KD for recommending Superpower.

This nonfiction book tackles the wind energy industry through the eyes of an entrepreneur who understands the need to connect (unequally-distributed) wind resource in the Oklahoma Panhandle to a potential customer (the TVA) by building a new direct current transmission line between Oklahoma and Tennessee. Political challenges and regulatory roadblocks to building the line are painfully numerous.

Readers gain a deeper understanding of the US electrical grid and how it may evolve as renewable fuel sources to make electricity are added.

As an energy pro and someone who lived through the "Little Texas Ice Age" of Feb 2021, I disagree with the $/megawatt comparisons toward the end of the book. Intermittent power from renewables like wind is simply not as valuable, particularly from an energy security standpoint (i.e. freezing in the dark due to forced electricity outage when demand for electricity exceeds supply), compared to load-following sources (natural gas as needed, including as ready back-up for renewables) or baseload (coal, gas, nuclear) sources.

(Battery storage to back up renewables doesn't get us there. According to one expert, the batteries we now have on the grid can store 20 seconds worth of US electricity usage and if we achieved a 10,000% expansion by 2050 we would only be able to store 20 minutes of US electricity usage.)

That said, Gold gives a superb picture of the size, location, and variation in the US wind resource (other states are not as windy as Oklahoma--who knew?), tax policy and finance issues, and the changes in the grid necessary to harness the increasing diversity of primary fuel sources to make electricity, such as wind.

Highly, highly recommended to all interested in the complexities of our energy future.

[Pia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know a fair amount about the energy industry, having worked in and around it in the admin side of the house all of my career. That said- Great read. Interesting, informative, and honestly, a little surreal when your husband is quoted. 😄

[Nilesh Jasani · Rating 1 out of 5]

Every adult has one or more biographies in them, and so does every corporate, every project, every government decision, or every vested interest. Most of these narratives are of interest to only those involved or loosely connected to the subject matter. Superpower is one such, even if well told, narrative.

To some, this might read like a story of an unsung visionary. To some others, this could be a case study on hurdles facing the alternative power industry in the US or anyone trying to get work done from politicians and bureaucrats. Some highly specialized historians might relish the details on the US power transmission grid build-up. Environmentalists might find many new things to worry about based on trivial and transient things people prioritize over critical climate matters.

And yet, despite the author's heavy attempts to paint everything as a story extraordinaire, this is where a casual reader on the subject is most likely to walk away with the simple question of what the fuss is all about. Notwithstanding the narrative's onesidedness and even fully believing in everything presented, there is little in the struggles, achievements, and failures of Skelly (and a few others) that is remarkable or inspiring enough to wow anyone new to the specific subject.

There is a lot here for those living in the areas mentioned, those involved with US windpower or transmission grid industries, policy historians, or those linked to the people mentioned. This reviewer does not belong to any such targetted or relevant audience categories.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Gold’s account of one of the most inspiring stories of American energy entrepreneurship is as intricate and engaging a page-turner as non-fiction can be. The story of Michael Skelly’s path to being one of the few true heroes of renewable energy the world has yet to see is equal parts inspiring and heartbreaking, but also reassuring, as an affirmation that the American entrepreneurial spirit is alive and kicking. The writing is engaging, fun, detailed and personal. Can’t wait for the next act from both Gold and Skelly!

[Steve Walsh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Less about the man than an in-depth dissection of the wind power debate and the fickle obstacles blocking development of the power grid in the U.S. Strangely a good examination of the extent of the byzantine politics that plague most political systems where reelection is a constant concern for the incumbent. Essentially the American energy system is a highly balkanized mess filled with self-serving pricks bent on stopping any competition from creating economically sound advancements.

[William Deas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really fascinating look into something I knew very little about! Dragged a little going through the regulatory hurdles but I suppose so did the project. Polsky was playing 6D chess while Shelly was playing hungry hippos.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

> They decided to give landowners as much information as possible to calm fears and, hopefully, win over residents. It would soon become clear there was a large downside to this approach. Clean Line was basically giving opponents lots of information to fight the project if they wanted. And because they started community meetings early in the application process—instead of waiting as long as possible—they were giving communities more time to organize.

> federal aviation rules prohibited power lines within three miles of airports of a certain size. Tiny Starbuck, Minnesota, announced a major expansion of its airport to exceed the federal size requirement. Never mind that no one in Starbuck was clamoring to turn the turf airstrip into a mini-O'Hare. The town said it intended to build a much larger lighted runway. The power line was routed north of Starbuck. Later, plans for the new runway were shelved.

> Clean Line had proposed building the wind farm in Oklahoma and sending the power through a 720-mile direct current line to Tennessee. In between, Arkansas received little … Skelly had relented and agreed to add a converter station in Pope County, Arkansas, that would serve as a 500-megawatt off-ramp. It added to the project's overall cost, but was necessary to make the project acceptable. Initially, Clean Line had decided not to put it there for a good reason: Skelly and others worried it would upset the powerful Arkansas utilities.

> Skelly said he expected to be able to come to terms with landowners for 95 percent or 96 percent of the parcels. Eminent domain would be required for the rest. If Skelly had been building a natural gas pipeline, he could have secured federal siting authority and finished this process in a matter of months. But the government had never provided a similar blueprint for transmission lines that crossed from state to state

[Novak · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read non-fiction, too, I just don't often review it.

Russell Gold's Superpower: One Man's Quest to Transform American Energy isn't broad enough to even be the full story of the last twenty years of progress in wind power, much less low-emissions power, and it's not quite focused enough to be a real biography of its semi-protagonist Michael Skelly, but it's interesting.

Michael Skelly is a guy who's been very active as a wind-power developer for some twenty, twenty-five years, and the book covers the two distinct periods of his career along with one brief interlude.

The first part is the successful part: As a hands-on developer, spending someone else's money to break into region wind power development. Regional, in this case, loosely defined as "You build it close to where it will be used, usually no more than a few hundred miles away, often in the same state but definitely on the same grid." This turns out to be easy, circa the mid 90s to mid 00s. It's not, really-- there's an element of right place, right time after a whole bunch of people had already made mistakes, but it's a success story in that Skelly kept building bigger and bigger wind farms, and eventually the investor sold the company for shit-tons of money plus piss-rivers of yearly dividends.

What's interesting is how much of this got its start in the Texas area. Geographically, it makes sense, especially a little north in Oklahoma or Kansas-- lots of flat land or low hills with near constant wind. But politically, you see a lot of names signing on to these deals that you wouldn't really expect to, like George W Bush during his governorship. Later, the same with Rick Perry.

The interlude is a brief failed run for Congress in a Texas district.

And then, the second and much more dismal part. There's a soft ceiling on how much wind power you can build in one area-- whether it's the panhandle area, or off-shore in New England, or wherever-- and the limit is political constraints on technology. If you can't reliably and cheaply get the power to where it will be consumed, you shouldn't bother to build it. And generally, places rich in wind power are sparsely populated.

The second part isn't about Skelly trying to build wind farms. It's about him realizing that the modern grid needs and overhaul and trying to step up and form a private company to do exactly that.

Spoiler alert: He is crushed.

His biggest best idea (although he had five, to mitigate against any one failure) is a privately owned and operated electrical line from the panhandle area all the way into the TVA grid, which is essentially the best, most over-built grid in the country. He is crushed by:

- Absurd, antiquated catch-22 state level put in place like legal moats by medieval power companies that don't even exist any more. Things like, "You can't own power lines unless you are a power company generating power in state," and "You can't be a power company unless you're generating power, and you can't generate power unless you are a power company," and the whole "certificate of need" thing. This can be kind of circumvented by federal partnership, but see below.

- Local opposition: There didn't seem to be an offer Skelly could make that would be accepted in some quarters, it's all "Git off mah land!" It comes across as so caricatured that it's hard to believe Gold is playing it straight, here. But eventually-- at the cost of many years-- they manage to get a path, or at least most of a path, signed off on by local property owners which doesn't involve knocking down houses. (There was a real obsession with not knocking down houses that is hard to understand because the developers never even suggested it.)

- State opposition: This is an area where the states have a terrible time coordinating and need the Federal government to step in and impose order to get anything done, just like the interstate highway system and the oil pipeline networks. If a line from OK to TN goes through AK, what does AK get out of it? Nothing, which amplifies the irrational local opposition. What can TN or OK offer? Nothing. Even the rent-seeking solutions get legally complicated or intractable.

- Lamar Alexander: Lamar Alexander has an irrational opposition to wind power. Seriously, the man hates the very idea and pulled every federal trick he could to shut the projects down.

- The Federal Government: The Obama Administration was slow to move on this stuff, and although they eventually did throw in support, by then the TVA was in "Let's wait to see who wins the next election." Well, it was Individual-1.

And that's how it died. Once that project ("Clean Line") was dead, the other four projects withered as investors read the writing on the wall and pulled their cash out.

Which is both sad and infuriating, because Skelly was playing by what the GOP said was the playbook-- market based solutions, private infrastructure solving national problems, leading to vast improvements in efficiency. As the book spans 20-odd years, it is scattered with contracts and terms and prices and amounts of electricity; the quantities kept going up, eventually but easily into the gigawatt range, with hundreds of megawatts on conctract, and the prices kept going down, eventually to 2 cents per kilowatt hour and below which is just mind-bogglingly cheap. It the sort of thing that makes a real difference to energy-intensive industries like steel-making and large scale manufacturing, who live and die by energy costs. And it's clean, even slightly cleaner and slightly cheaper than nuclear, for old nuclear construction.

Didn't matter. Doesn't matter.

Didn't grease the right palms, didn't enrich the right donors, didn't pat the right constituencies on the ass.

It's such a god damned waste. Wind power isn't the sole solution for national power production, but it would be an exceptionally good addition to it if it could be done at grid scale.

But it can't, not right now.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a newcomer to the renewables industry, this was a great read. It illuminates the (brief) history of the industry, and highlights development problems that persist today. Great book!

[Dean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trying to do good for the planet and humanity is hard. Selfish, misguided, antagonistic people make it harder.

The book could've been ~50 pages shorter.

[Anna Shulman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a fascinating story in and of itself but a very difficult read. Some editing could have made it a bit more digestible. It reads like a very long newspaper article, sometimes transgressing into a conversation type narrative. I suppose style here wasn't the point, but it diluted the overall quality.

[Ryan Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fast-paced story that’s informative yet not too information-heavy. This book is definitely accessible to all readers and assumes no prior knowledge. Gold manages to break down complex development tasks into easy-to-understand descriptions of the problems faced when revolutionizing one of America’s biggest pieces of infrastructure. Furthermore, Superpower does a great job of focusing on the most captivating stories and keeping the book moving forward at a steady pace.

As the US and the rest of the world begin to move towards more renewable sources of energy, entrepreneurs are scrambling to take their part in the revolution. Michael Skelly is one such person who is bent on updating the mess of loosely connected wires that is the American electrical grid. Superpower follows Skelly’s career as he takes on projects on the cutting edge of energy innovation including a wind farm and an interstate high-voltage transmission line.

In the US, the grid arose in a haphazard manner as the country rushed to electrify. What’s left behind is a collection of grid operators and utility companies who each operate in their own political and economical interests with no incentive to innovate or cooperate with each other. As the book explores, even companies with ample funding and solid development plans are faced with the struggles of local politics, NIMBYs, and the glacial pace of the federal government. Even with a seemingly win-win project, it becomes clear that the task of getting states to cooperate with each other and convincing people of progress is near impossible. Unlike the interstate highway system, the power grid is almost invisible and it’s incredibly difficult to get people to support something when they can’t see the tangible benefits.

Gold ends the book by highlighting a paper written by Christopher Clack detailing how, by 2030, the US could cut carbon dioxide emissions rates by 80% with only existing technology. There’s no need for us to wait for some sort of breakthrough in electrical storage; the technology is already here we just need to figure out how to get states to cooperate with each other. We need more stories like Michael Skully’s in which persistent and dedicated people slowly fix the broken system. Overall, I think Superpower contains a lot of interesting knowledge about renewable energy but also gives an interesting look into human nature and politics.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable book, a combination life story of entrepreneur Michael Skelly and a deep-dive on his failed transmission start up, Clean Line Energy Partners. It's detailed enough to be interesting to me, someone working in related industries but also definitely accessible to non-practitioners. For me, it was like being in a parallel universe--way back when, I turned down a job at Horizon Wind (itself a big player in this book, where Skelly made his name in renewables), working for David Berry, after interviewing with Jayshree Desai (both big players in this book). It is surreal to imagine what my life would have been like had I taken that job instead (which, then and now, was less a fit for my particular skills than the one I ended up taking).

Anyway, not the point! This book does a good job explaining the economics of electricity and of transmission, and also the cumbersome regulatory process that is a serious headwind to modernizing our electricity system. One point I thought was really interesting was Desai's point of empathy with those opposed to the project because it would affect their land, or even their views: "We are asking people for a sacrifice. And what are we sacrificing in return? I don't have a great answer for that." The moral, I think, is to make sure that everyone along the right-of-way is well-compensated, indeed perhaps at the expense of equity owners. Given the need to build new infrastructure, it's the only way, I think (and that applies to highways, too).

My one quibble is with Gold's characterization that AEP "stole" Clean Line's idea of an Oklahoma power transmission line--project development isn't just about ideas, it's also about execution, and if Clean Line fell down on the latter, then that's a legitimate reason for a firm to die. Well, actually, two quibbles--this book also needed a copyeditor.

tl;dr NIMBYism not only makes housing affordable in increasingly many US cities, but it (along with our balkanized regulatory system) is making it extremely difficult to reduce carbon emissions. This is true for building power transmission to deliver renewable energy to consumers, and it's true for gas transmission to serve areas currently burning coal. A United States with increasingly many veto points is one that will eventually be crippled by the costs of aging, not-fit-for-purpose infrastructure.

[Kyle Weil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Superpower is an extremely interesting and informative read for anyone looking to learn about renewable energy and the US power grid. While Superpower's main character, Martin Skelly, originally staked his fortune in the wind industry, the real gem of this book is in its exploration of the current need for a national transmission system. Current high-voltage transmission cables operate intrastate, leaving the US with a bunch of patchwork grids. This leaves low-cost energy, especially in renewables which are dependent on weather, underutilized in the US. A national high transmission system would be like putting the highway system in place but for electricity.

While I found the subject matter interesting, the plot itself was pretty lackluster and lacked suspense (for a nonfiction telling a story). Gold would make it obvious when something was going to fail hundreds of pages before it actually failed, making the whole process feel pointless. Additionally, Gold could be repetitive with his reintroduction of information from previous pages (mostly about people). I also felt like there could have been more elementary, explanatory information on wind energy and what made it a good energy option.

Solid read to learn more about transmission in the US.

[Belston Campfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

R. Gold does a great job of writing an entertaining story about one man's mission to improve the nation's electrical grid in order to generate green electricity on a national scale. If you want to learn about how the electrical grid works and why it must be drastically overhauled in order to support cleaner sources of electricity, then I recommend this book.

[Jacob Cannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gold guides readers on a masterfully narrated journey through a frustratingly painful regulatory and political process. I left with greater respect for all clean energy advocates, profound gratitude for leaders like Michael Skelly who persevere, and a resolve to act more intentionally in my own pursuit of environmental ambition.

[Teerth Brahmbhatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quote from Michael Skelly at the end:
"You only get one life, right? " "You might as well do something that is interesting, is challenging and is exciting. If it weren't all of those things, it wouldn't be worthwhile"

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superpower is about wind power, political power and one man’s, Micheal Skelly, unwavering commitment to create a new superhighway by transforming the United State’s infrastructure for transporting energy mainly ‘clean’ energy. Who would have thought that wind energy could be so intriguing—Superpower reads like a thriller with rivalries and intrigues between politicians, utility executives, investors, farmers, landowners, with wind power at the fulcrum.

The book is approachable for non-experts (like me), but no doubt energy experts will also find it enlightening.

Mr. Skelly had a big vision for harnessing wind power—similar to building railways across the country in 1890s. His vision was to erect high capacity power lines across the country to transport wind power (and solar) via connected grids, by locating power lines in strategic locations. The level of planning and negotiating this project entailed, not to mention the field work that involved meeting farmers, landowners and dealing with utility companies and untangling the laws that protect them, is mind boggling. In a country that (appears to) strive for clean energy policies in the wake of global climate change, this seems like a no-brainer, yet wind farms and its delivery gets tangled up in layers of politics and red tape, along with the mindset—‘not-in-my-backyard’.

I wonder if the opposition that Skelly encountered in trying to connect people to clean energy was similar to what Theodore Judah, the key figure in establishing the transnational railway system experienced in the 1850s. One key difference between the two—the railway was funded by the federal government; Skelly’s proposal involved no investment by the government, it was all privately funded. Did this help or hinder the project? Not sure, but the excerpt below gives insight into what Skelly was dealing with:

"We’re following all of the steps required", Skelly told reporters, “and ultimately, the decision-makers will decide.” There was no sugarcoating it. If passed, the bill would kill Skelly’s plans and turn Clean Line into a husk. If that wasn’t bad enough, it felt downright tribal to Skelly. The United States power grid was hopelessly balkanized. Grid operators and utilities had their fiefdoms and had little to no incentive to cooperate with each other. There were all kinds of legacy institutional barriers to building transmission lines that crossed from one fiefdom to another. This bill would further etch that balkanization into law. Skelly was trying to build a transmission line that connected different grids, and tied them together, sharing power in a way that create stability and enable clean, inexpensive power to flow across state lines (pg. 208).

This book is important. I learned a great deal due to Gold’s accessible and sometimes humorous writing style. I think more Americans, those who know little about energy and its politics would benefit by learning more about what’s really going on with energy. It’s one thing to say you support clean energy, but another to determine what that means and learn what politicians and institutions (e.g utility companies) are doing about it.

[Rohan Dalvi · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Superpower" is partially the story of the Clean Line transmission project, and partially the story of the characters involved - especially Michael Skelly, the developer spearheading the project.

This book made me realize that it is pretty amazing how much organizational effort goes into to the buildout of interstate energy infrastructure. There are so many parties to align - local landowners for wind farming, farmers whose farms power lines might hang over, state commissions which regulate buildout, utilities, elected officials at a federal level, the DoE, investors. Of course, this alignment issues also explains why transmission projects tend to be local and only moderately ambitious in scale. Transmission buildout will be critical in coming years to realize the full potential of renewables; while academically it is a no-brainer (it results in low cost power and reduces emissions, and many of the involved can reap huge financial benefits), Skelly's story indicates how the emotional / political component makes this really hard - NIMBYism, resistance to new energy sources, an aversion to helping out ratepayers in other states, the wavering of counterparties including financiers and customers.

The book does a decent job of informing the reader about the mechanics of the power sector, but more through storytelling than through direct explanation. It provided me a much clearer understanding of how power purchase deals get made, how developers address local resistance, how politics can interfere with implementation-- how the sausage gets made, so to speak.

The writing is super engaging. There are a lot of entertaining anecdotes interwoven, both of Skelly and of other characters or the local histories involved. Overall, really recommend!

[Graham Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0-4.5

As someone who wants to make a career out of renewable energy development,  "Superpower" is one of the most relevant books I have read in graduate school. The book chronicles the career of Michael Skelly, a passionate entrepreneur who built up one of the biggest wind energy companies in the world and tried to build the electricity equivalent of interstate highways to transport energy generated by Oklahoma wind farms to the other side of the Mississippi.

Superpower does a great job explaining the complexities of renewable energy and the electric grid. It's one thing to build wind turbines, it's another to get it to the consumers and developers like Skelly need new transmission lines to transport the energy. That of course led to Skelly's ongoing struggles with anti-wind politicians, NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) residents who don't want transmission lines going through their land, etc. The book does a good job showing Skelly's frustrations at delays and defeats and the successes when his companies managed to win. The way the book is set up, you really get to know Skelly and his employees and you find yourself rooting for them. Beyond being emotionally investing, Superpower is very educational and does a great job breaking down  the logistics of planning out transmission routes and pricing electricity from different sources. It can be overwhelming at times but the book is pretty good about breaking things down for people unfamiliar with energy politics. 

As the climate crisis worsens and the need to transition towards a clean energy economy becomes more urgent, "Superpower" is a must read for anyone curious on what still needs to be done to ensure we make the energy process we direly need.

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book especially for my work right now in a renewable energy development company. It really goes into the politics behind renewables, both with utilities, politicians, and renewable energy companies. Paints a picture of all the roadblocks out there that block essential infrastructure projects in the United States. “The real world is messier, with politicians and their preferences, outdated statutes, angry residents, entrenched utilities, and a dozen other factors.”

“The United States could eliminate more than 90 percent of its carbon emissions with a network of direct current transmission lines, while also cutting costs by 20 percent.”
Mathematician Christopher Clack:
“We should learn from Skelly and keep moving ahead… one lesson, he said, was don’t build point-to-point direct current lines like the Plains and Eastern from Oklahoma to Memphis. We need to think about a network of transmission with fewer long lines and more short direct current lines. With more, shorter lines—like interstate highway segments connecting cities— every state will have an off ramp to download power. You can have off-takers in every state, and have jobs in every state and tax revenue in every state, he said. This will ease some of the political problems.
The network will be more resilient and reliable. If a storm knocks out part of a new network, other routes will be available. The power grid can be cleaner, cheaper and more reliable. All of this is doable, Clack emphasized. The technology all exists.”

Skelly: “You only get one life, right? You might as well do something that is interesting and is challenging and is exciting. If it weren’t all those things, it wouldn’t be worthwhile.”

[Harry Harman]

Skelly’s former employer, a wind farm developer, had erected a couple of needle-thin meteorological towers with instruments to measure wind speed. They were the tallest structures for miles around. The results were striking. The winds were strong and surprisingly steady. The data collected was good enough to go to a bank and get nancing for a wind farm

He urged them to sign energy leases.

Here’s another way of understanding the scale of Skelly’s vision: One of the United States’ leading rooftop solar panel companies, SolarCity, was founded in 2006 and became part of Tesla and Elon Musk’s empire a decade later. As of early 2018, it had installed 3,310 megawatts. Skelly’s Oklahoma panhandle renewable energy complex would be bigger and produce power at a much lower cost.

the three largest power plants in the United States are all nuclear facilities: Palo Verde in Arizona, Browns Ferry on the Tennessee River in northern Alabama, and Oconee in the northwest corner of South Carolina.

ERCOT got very good at day-ahead wind forecasting.

Power meant burning coal or natural gas, damming rivers, or splitting atoms.

A kilowatt hour is roughly equivalent to running a vacuum for an hour, or playing a PlayStation or Xbox for ve hours.

Texas was deregulating its energy industry. Gone were the companies with monopolies over certain geographic areas that generated power and delivered it on wires, earning a state-guaranteed return on their investment. In January 1999, a bill had been introduced into the legislature to create a competitive market for power generation.

[Neptic · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book told the story of how the people before us paved the way of changing the law of allowing people to generate their own power (renewables) and how utility will buy back the excess and the history of wind power. The story doesn't just stick with one person as it jumps around many times as time progresses.

This book highlighted to me how hard it is with the current laws set in place to get any reasonable progress done if you want to consider if you want to integrate large scale renewable into the grid as it is often harder if you aren't a utility, many laws to get through, especially if you are planning to transport it across state lines, the need for transmission lines to carry the current, DC lines are the better option compared to AC lines, and just the money you need for the project and the additional fees you will be fighting in litigation from opposition.

This book showed all those struggled and how the people before us made it easier for the people after them to increase the use of renewables into the energy grid. Didn't expect Clean Line the company to go down like that at the end of the book, but it shows how hard it is to enact change in a grid that has been around for so long and with the laws supporting the utilities in so many ways that inhibit these much needed changes to the system.

[Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Superpower, author Russell Gold does a brilliant job of making long distance transmission in the US both interesting and engaging. The story of Michael’s Shelly’s lifelong goal of upgrading the US grid with long distance high voltage transmission lines is a fascinating story of perseverance, triumph, and ultimately failure that captures the imagination. The authors story telling and anecdotes, that he weaves in superbly, leads to an easy read that demystifies the us power grid via the personal story of one man’s journey.

Personal takeaways:
- transmission is incredibly hard to do over long distances. Too many interested parties (landowners, politicians, utilities) that you have to deal with. One weak link will break the whole chain
- hv dc transmission is paramount though to a renewable future. Somehow need to figure out how to do this (perhaps look to China)
- stakeholder engagement is critical. Need to start early and keep engaged
- need to present compelling narrative (not just financial metrics) to convince people of projects worth. DONT forget about vindictive politicians who can derail a project at their leisure if not properly involved ($)
- don’t put all your eggs in one basket and be so naive that people you work with won’t steal your idea

[Niko Jaakkola · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a business book about Michael Skelly, a renewable energy entrepreneur pursuing his grand vision of turning parts of the Great Plains into one big wind farm, and building a network of massive transmission lines in order to get the electricity to potential customers.

Obviously the project is far from plain sailing. Politics intrudes a lot -- with states like Arkansas or Missouri objecting to the idea of the transmission lines crossing their territory without giving much in the way of benefits to local residents. NIMBYism delays and delays a project which would, after all produce a clear overall benefit to energy producers, energy consumers, and indeed the environment. In other words, it's exactly the kind of a problem you would want to have a Federal government for. Of course Skelly is building his project in the years of increasing polarisation, both in the counties where his people are promoting the project, and in Washington, D.C.

It's a fun, short book to read as an economist, to get some sense of what it can be to be in business & to highlight in a very concrete manner some classic problems in economics.

[S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspiring recount of Michael Skelly's (still active) career in clean energy. Gives insight into the technical, logistical, and political requirements to realize ambitious large-scale utility infrastructure.

One of the ending takeaways was how to get the US grid to be more efficient and support growing modern needs, e.g. EVs.
"Don't build point-to-point direct current lines like the Plains & Eastern from Oklahoma to Memphis. We need to think about a network of transmission with fewer long lines and more short direct current lines.
With more, shorter lines -- like interstate highway segments connecting cities -- every state will have an off-ramp to download power. 'You can have off-takers in every state, and have jobs in every state and tax revenue in every state,'... This will ease some of the political problems.
The network will be more resilient and reliable. If a storm knocks out part of a new network, other routes will be available. The power grid can be cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable.
All of this is doable... The technology all exists. 'All we have to do is learn to have people agree on this stuff... Essentially we can start building today.'"

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Throughout history there have been those thinkers ahead of their time. This is a fascinating story of Michael Skelly, an engineer with a vision for renewable, clean energy as a practical source to supply more than 70% of America's power needs. Nearly twenty years ago he not only imagined the possibilities but also moved to realize them. He built the second largest wind company in the United States which he sold for $2 billion. He carried his message to investors, utilities, municipalities and the Federal Government. He built a second company which would build thousands of miles of high-voltage, direct current (DC) transmission lines to bring power from the plains of Oklahoma to the needs of utilities throughout the Southwest and East Coasts. He almost succeeded. But his quest has laid the ground work for what some thought was a utopian dream: a nation's energy needs to be met through renewable, clean, non-polluting power. Russell Gold, Energy Reporter for the Wall Street Journal, has skillfully told the story, with an ending still to be realized.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detailed story of efforts by Michael Skelly early attempts to build large scale wind energy installations. Although the technology was there and Skelly was willing to invest a lot of his own resources, there were many levels of regulatory obstacles involving Federal and State approvals and permissions, as well as working within markets controlled by utilities and other existing regulations and dealing with public and questions of access/eminent domain. Unfortunately, although he made things easier for others who worked in this area (as well as using some of his concepts and technology) he himself was not successful to be able to build his projects. Good historical point of view - points brought up should also be considered when expanding the current grid with renewable energy sources of non-continuous energy capture. Note, the larger the interconnecting grid, the better to smooth out power supply and distribution. This book might only appeal to those interested in the details of using and distribution renewable wind power.