At the end of April the California Independent System Operator issued it's "2008 Summer Loads and Resources Operations Preparedness Assessment", an extensive overview issued every year in the Spring to acess the load and generation requirements for high, hot, days of summer in the Golden State.
Among other things, it presents a concise (albeit about 30 pages long, but all online), factual, graph-laden report on the issues the CAISO has to deal with in meeting our summer demands. One can learn an awful lot of how a grid function and what are every conceivable issue when maintaining the grid over a large region, especially as it relates to generation, generation sources and capacity factors.
An entire university course could be taught around this document. It would be a multi-disciplinary course, reaching across collage quads to encompass finances, economics, engineering, meteorology, hydrology, and English writing skills.
