In the beginning, power companies were absolute monopolies. The wires coming into our houses only came from one company. They made the electricity, and they set the prices. They paid thousands of engineers to design and build magnificent, multi-billion dollar nuclear and coal plants. All that has changed. Power companies have far less control.

The new power companies are increasingly you and me. It’s not just solar panels on our roofs. Factories and power-hungry data centers now build their own, smaller power plants “behind the meter” and only use the traditional grid for back up. Still, skeptics ask, “Is the Green New Deal even possible?” Others wonder, “Is it perhaps inevitable?” One thing is certain. Where you get your electricity in the future will not be where you got it from in the past.

William R. Gould, Jr.

Mr. Bill Gould received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering from BYU in 1972. He is a registered Mechanical and/or Nuclear engineer in several states. His career was spent in managing the design, construction, and operation of some of the largest and most complex power plants in the world. These power plants were fueled by coal, fuel oil, natural gas, nuclear, or most recently, by wind and by solar power. They include plants built overseas in Asia and Africa, as well as in several U.S. states.

Bill Gould has been a frequent speaker at technical conferences and a consultant for the U.S. Department of Energy and other industry groups. His most recent position was the Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of the SolarReserve company, which built high temperature solar thermal power plants like the 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes station in Nevada, which has enough energy storage so that it can continue delivering electricity at full power all through the night. But he counts as his greatest joy his marriage to the former Carol Howell of Provo, Utah, with whom he has been married for over 50 years, their seven children, 28 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.