How to Ignite the Second Electrical Revolution

I recently read an article which was entitled 'How to ignite the second electrical revolution' which talked about ideas I have communicated to everyone I know.

All of the things talked about in this article were no brainers to me. Up until now the electric utility got no benefit by pushing efficiency etc, instead they reaped their rewards of the most inefficient items connected to the grid. It would be like hooking a gift horse in the mouth if you ask me. How can you expect an electric utility to sponsor energy efficiency which would cost them money in the long run?

I mean in an ideal world we would have a smart grid complete with shutting off things like your water heater and your air conditioner while you are at work or otherwise away; we would have superconductors for transmission lines. But alas this is the real world that we are living in.

I mean we could have superconductor transmission lines if the electric utilities were willing to make a huge investment in their infrastructure. But I doubt that will happen anytime soon. In fact I would venture to guess it will not happen until one of two things happen-- either the cost of implementing such superconducting transmission lines is greatly reduced, or the cost of the power losses is greater than the savings they would get from implementing such a change. For those of you who are wondering what in the heck I am talking about here I would like to direct you to a post that I made on March 17th of this year, in which I explained superconductors in laymen's terms (it is not a highly technical post at all).

According to the earlier article which I referenced in it the Edison institute quoted a man referred to only as Pink, who said the power industry's creative thinkers should attack this problem. His views were if all the industry's creative thinkers were to put their collective heads together and try to work up a solution of some sort that we probably would.