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Britain is spending over £100 billion fixing its electricity system. OVERCHARGED shows the problems date back to the founding of the grid exactly 100 years ago.
With his customary irreverence and scathing humour, Nick Rosen brings those early debates to life, from Caroline Haslett, the original kitchen influencer who popularised electrical gadgets to 1930s families, to a modern-day whistleblower from inside the National Grid.
December 15th 2026 is the 100th anniversary of the grid's founding - a time for nostalgia and a chance to look into the future.
This book examines what happens when a system designed around King Coal and one-way flows encounters rooftop solar, batteries, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and booming data centres.
The debate today filling acres of newspaper columns from the heavyweight to the tabloid media, is much the same one as ran a century ago - only the scale is vastly greater, and the money is flowing rapidly in the wrong direction. The problem is not about more electricity: a rethink is needed on how we generate, move, store, and use it, and, ultimately, about who controls it.