Understanding Electric Utilities and Deregulation, Second Edition [Book Review]

This book is part of the Taylor & Francis (formerly Marcel Dekker) Power Engineering Series. It updates the first, released in 1999, to reflect subsequent developments in deregulation and to include new material on blackouts, service reliability, and issues of dealing with an aging physical infrastructure. The book provides good descriptions of the power system, the technologies, and the layers in the transmission and distribution network that deliver the power to the customer. It also provides good discussions on renewable technologies, distributed generation technologies, and the rationale and practice of utility regulation the 1980s and 1990s. The text´s treatment of deregulation is a disappointment, with dated material and a lack of coverage on critical deregulation issues on the table today. The book concludes with a strong discussions about maintaining reliability in an aging distribution system and of the nature and causes of blackouts. The book is recommended for people new to the field and for visitors from abroad to help them understand electrical power systems.