Why would a big power company push customers to conserve? Get the bottom line from MidAmerican's main spokesman.

Transcript: Electricity Power Pool

Back in the 1960s, we didn't have a power pool or what's called a reliability grid system. Simply, you had a lot of local utilities that generated power for their own town and their own use. What we saw in the 60s were a series of blackouts that had a cascading effect across the country. And that's a very bad situation to be in because electricity is this essential service. Since that time, there are now reliability councils or power pools that utilities belong to. And in Iowa, we belong to about a 10-state region or so in the upper Midwest and Canada called the midcontinent area power pool. And all of those utilities are interconnected into this system and the electric load and electric demand is monitored from a single point. So that if there is an increase in demand in one part of the grid, other utilities can help meet that need.