Re: AC electricity in CA

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@SFU.CA>]

> You might be interested to know that how the public views electricity can
> have some serious monetary implications.  My brother in law is a tax lawyer
> and the taxation of electricity for the producer, transmitter, or user is a
> major issue.  Apparently, if electricity can be considered "tangible
> personal property," then it can be taxed differently than if it is not.  So
> educating future politicians and lawyers to understand "electricity - that
> ill- defined term" is rather important.  I think that the laws are written
> as if electricity is a well-defined term, which means all the laws relating
> to electricity are ill-defined.

Larry has raised an issue to which physicists can speak competently. There
are two aspects to be examined here. What is being called "power" is not
power in the technical sense. Electric utilities sell energy as a physicist
knows because it is reckoned (correctly, if not SI) in kilowatt hours. This
change in terminology would certainly clarify communication for those among
us who are sensitive to the important distinction. The reason for the
California problems is not a power shortage in any sense.

Once energy is established as the good that is being sold, a philosophical
issue very near to my heart arises, to which a physicist can again speak
authoritatively. Energy is distinctly *not* tangible property. To treat it
as being such is a common cognitive error and a physically useful fiction.

Leigh