When systems are overthrown: the `Dash for Gas' in the British electricity supply industry
By: Winskel, Mark.
Material type:
ArticlePublisher: 2002Description: p.563-98.Subject(s): Power industry - Great Britain | Power industry
In:
Social Studies of ScienceSummary: The privatization of the British electricity supply industry (ESI) in the late 1980s and early 1990s was associated with a transformation in electricity generation technology. In a sudden and unexpected `Dash for Gas', previously unused combined cycle gas turbine plant was adopted for all new large power stations. Gas turbine technology, politically and institutionally excluded from the industry before privatiztion, gained ascendancy due to the coincidence and interaction of ESI liberalization with lower fuel prices and greater availability, improved turbine performance, pollution abatement legislation, and the manifestation of institutional tensions accumulated under nationalization. An earlier paper found that the demise of established generation technology, particularly the British nuclear power programme, exposed the inadequacies of autonomistic and deterministic notions of technlogical change.The present paper considers the value of a more subtle framework - Hughes' sociotechnical systems model - for analyzing the rise of gas turbines in the British ESI.The systems perspective enables the `Dash for Gas' to be understood, rather than as a result of technical and economic imperatives, or structural and regulatory reform, as a contingent and largely unplanned outcome of the interplay of previously excluded international forces with latent local interests,mediated by policy making expediency. Liberalization swiftlyled to the replacement of centralized system building with fragmented `postmodern' change. - Reproduced.
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Articles
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Indian Institute of Public Administration | Volume no: 32, Issue no: 4 | Available | AR55298 |
The privatization of the British electricity supply industry (ESI) in the late 1980s and early 1990s was associated with a transformation in electricity generation technology. In a sudden and unexpected `Dash for Gas', previously unused combined cycle gas turbine plant was adopted for all new large power stations. Gas turbine technology, politically and institutionally excluded from the industry before privatiztion, gained ascendancy due to the coincidence and interaction of ESI liberalization with lower fuel prices and greater availability, improved turbine performance, pollution abatement legislation, and the manifestation of institutional tensions accumulated under nationalization. An earlier paper found that the demise of established generation technology, particularly the British nuclear power programme, exposed the inadequacies of autonomistic and deterministic notions of technlogical change.The present paper considers the value of a more subtle framework - Hughes' sociotechnical systems model - for analyzing the rise of gas turbines in the British ESI.The systems perspective enables the `Dash for Gas' to be understood, rather than as a result of technical and economic imperatives, or structural and regulatory reform, as a contingent and largely unplanned outcome of the interplay of previously excluded international forces with latent local interests,mediated by policy making expediency. Liberalization swiftlyled to the replacement of centralized system building with fragmented `postmodern' change. - Reproduced.
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