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The way electric power is generated and distributed will change substantially over the next two decades. Power will be democratized, as small-scale production at the individual and community level moves from niche to normal. The resulting “electron-democracy” will still have centralized power plants, but power grid activity will increasingly be dominated by innumerable incremental energy flows between small producers and consumers. This is likely to happen whether or not public policy mandates a shift away from dependence on fossil fuels.
Most centralized plants (hydro excepted) cannot easily adjust to demand fluctuations, leading to steeply discounted off-peak rates and the need to acquire additional plants for high-demand periods. More broadly, an expansive transmission grid dominated by a few central power plants is vulnerable to disruption from both natural phenomena and human malevolence.
In contrast, smaller-scale power generation can respond more nimbly to market demand, in a shorter time frame, with lower capital costs. Filling supplemental power needs with niche supplies rather than primary power facilities creates new generation options that that otherwise would be impractical. Finally, a grid fed by a broad, physically dispersed heterogeneous mixture of power sources would provide robust protection against disruption.1
Putting these strands together and looking forward, the distributed grid might look like this: intermittent wind and solar power generation would be complemented by load-supplementing fuel cell plants, in much the same way that peak power and base load power plants interact today. Electric vehicles (EVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and batteries would serve as grid energy storage when excess energy is being produced. The latter is analogous to the role of pumped-storage hydroelectric in current utility systems, where water is pumped from a lower reservoir to a higher one for later use in generating hydroelectric power.
Considering the intensifying pace of climate change, governments should play an ambitious role in the transition from today’s grid to tomorrow’s electron democracy. Governments could coordinate with local business to develop centers of excellence for distributed power in targeted industries. Mechanisms such as feed-in tariffs—which grant favorable rates for those generating power from renewables and clean-tech sources—could facilitate the development of these regional technology clusters. They would bring ancillary economic benefits as well.
We are hopeful that by 2030, our energy system will be considerably less dependent on fossil fuels, particularly for electric power generation. Supported by a diverse array of renewables, our energy needs could be met with an overlapping set of complementary clean technologies. In doing so, we would strongly curb our global warming emissions. We would then be poised not only to stabilize the climate, but to transcend the Fossil Fuel Age entirely and open a new “Age of Sustainability” in our human story.
1 A closer examination of these topics is available from Jeff Vail (A Theory of Power) and John Robb (Brave New War) in their writings on “rhizome” at jeffvail.net and “resilient communities” at globalguerrillas.typepad.com, respectively.
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14 Apr 2010 · 06:40:40 AM GMT
Communitization of the Power Houses is a nice idea and definitely looks like the Go-to way. And if We go a step further democracy lane then electron democracy can be at the individual home basis as well. I always had an idea of a energy self suff...—Chandrika Rathee
In response to Electron-democracy
06 Jan 2010 · 06:21:10 PM GMT
I think that there is a big issue of more and more renewable sources producing irregular power transmission. The power generated by renewable sources is not controllable, and at best vaguely predictable. A system that has renewable energy at its hear...—Naresh Ranvah
In response to Electron-democracy
12 Dec 2009 · 04:24:18 AM GMT
I can’t wait until half the desert is covered in parabolic trough solar thermal fields.—Eric Kline
In response to Electron-democracy
03 Dec 2009 · 07:58:43 PM GMT
Since fossil fuel prices are going to be staggering high, especially after peak-oil, there would be a good reason to use those profits to invest in other durable energy sources. Either we have to nationalize the oil companies, or seriously taxate th...—Rob Heusdens
In response to The end of the oil age
14 Jul 2009 · 02:57:03 AM GMT
The idea of a more democratized grid to be able to respond more quickly to the variations in demand for energy sounds like a viable option, but I belief that to be feasible only under the conditions of a more centralized control over the grid. In ...—Henk Perdok
In response to Electron-democracy
20 May 2009 · 05:04:02 PM GMT
I really appreciate the thinking beyond oil. In Italy, where I live, the nostalgic desire of nucelar power stations has reached the irresponsible political level. But I’m asking: Does it make any sense to invest 10 billions Euros and 10 years t...—Alex Colombo
Communitization of the Power Houses is a nice idea and definitely looks like the Go-to way. And if We go a step further democracy lane then electron democracy can be at the individual home basis as well.
I always had an idea of a energy self sufficient solar houses where the body of the house is the solar panel for supplying and storing the energy needs.
If government have to subsidize any thing then one area which should get this fund infusion is the research and manufacturing for mass availability of cheap solar energy run devices and solar panels.
Same goes with the other renewable sources of energy.Renewable being a claen source is very much the community product.
Posted 14 April 2010, 06:40 by Chandrika Rathee
I think that there is a big issue of more and more renewable sources producing irregular power transmission. The power generated by renewable sources is not controllable, and at best vaguely predictable. A system that has renewable energy at its heart will suffer from a lot of variability in its power generation. Thus power system protection will have to keep up with such a revolution.
Posted 6 January 2010, 18:21 by Naresh Ranvah
I can’t wait until half the desert is covered in parabolic trough solar thermal fields.
Posted 12 December 2009, 04:24 by Eric Kline
The idea of a more democratized grid to be able to respond more quickly to the variations in demand for energy sounds like a viable option, but I belief that to be feasible only under the conditions of a more centralized control over the grid.
In general you can see that if systems move from being controlled centrally in its operations to more decentralized the voilatility tends to increase due to the “snowball” effect, when certain changes are introduced in the system (analogy stockmarkets).
This effect can still be stronger if and when information about the status of demand is not equally available or shared.
I’m in favor of a restructuering of our current energy systems and decentralize them for a stronger and more robust structure, but centralised management and control is required to have that work adequately.
A second positive effect that could come with decentrlization is that the local stakeholders could choice the configuration (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, warmpower,…)which fits best to their local conditions.
Posted 14 July 2009, 02:57 by Henk Perdok
The question is not whether to subsidize renewable energy or not. We already subsidize energy now because the investment horizon is too far out for most profit driven ventures to do any sort of generation projects. The payback on a coal plant is much longer than even the ten year recovery period on a small scale solar water heater. Society recognized the need to plan further into the future than we do as individuals or companies though. A new coal plant in the 1950s was a much easier sell to the populace when the alternative was no electricity at all. It was expensive was worth the cost.
Renewables have a similar investment time frame, but we think we have a choice about making this new investment or not. The lights are on today so why should I chose to pay more to get the same thing? It is a recent realization on our parts that it’s not the same thing. We are still internalizing all the negatives of fossil fuels and beginning to solidify a societal will to change. We know renewables are expensive and we are now seeing them as worth the cost.
Those of us in this space need to continue to do the work we are doing to develop and implement this next generation of sustainable, distribute, and democratic energy infrastructure despite all the frustration from what seems to be slow progress. The cracks are already showing in the dam that is our fossil fuel energy structure; the built up pressure behind it will lead to dramatic and inevitable change. We need to be ready to ride the wave because it is worth our effort.
Posted 28 April 2009, 11:11 by Alex Kelley
One additional variable to consider in comparing any distributed network of power generation versus a central production and distribution scheme should be overall efficiency, both in terms of energy use but also capital use. Missing from the original story is a discussion about the “losses” of energy and infrastructure costs/complexities associated with the distribution network. It’s my understanding that a significant portion of the power generated at a large scale plant is lost during transmission. As well, as our need for energy rises new transmission infrastructure must be created in the central model that may be unnecessary in a distributed generation model. Does anyone have hard numbers on the comparative “system level” efficiencies of centrally produced power vs distributed generation? How about the value of reducing the infrastructure costs of large distribution? Here it seems important to consider not just dollars but also the time, “community pain”, public opinion, and environmental costs associated with putting in new large scale power transmission vs distributed power.
On the issues of subsidies and market distortions there’s clearly much much more to the issue than is being discussed here. A couple of facets to consider are the not so hidden costs of our military efforts to secure foreign energy supplies and the huge multi-leveled benefit to the U.S. of a dollar being spent to purchase/produce energy from a domestic source as opposed to a non-U.S. source. Here I’m thinking taxes, jobs (which leads to more taxes), technological advancement (increased self determination, exports and more jobs and taxes) and the benefits that come from having domestic source control of your national energy market.
Posted 23 April 2009, 20:53 by Philip Houle
The response time of a powerplant is dependant more on the technology used. For instance the response time of a hydro plant is the quickest and hence it is easily the most suited for handling peaking power or chsing demand load fluctuations. While a gas turbine can also chase a load variation faster than a coal based/Nuclear plant, its response time (ramp up and back down time) is much slower than that of a hydro plant. It is the coal based/Nuclear power plants which have the slowest response time and hence are most suited for baseload requirements. Infact hydro pumped storage schemes used in conjunction with base load plants can provide the required flexibility to chase the demand fluctuations.
One would need to accept that large coalbased/nuclear power plants, apart from reaping economies of scale also provides cheaper power due to the relatively lower cost of fuel, which makes them the predominant choice in countries like China, India and other developing economies where the demand for power is surging
Posted 30 March 2009, 01:48 by Sanjay Chadha
I agree that we will see more distributed energy sources in the future, but am not sure how much more, in particular in places like British Columbia where electricity from clean source (hydro) is available at low cost. It is depend on how attractive and affordable the technology will be, and how powerful the government incentive will be to drive people toward distributed generation.
Posted 27 March 2009, 03:12 by Yasuhiko Ogushi
I agree with you Richard.
Subsidies are not the answer and they are actually not needed.
What is needed is fair market pricing for electricity and the opening up of the grids to new energy generation.
We are seeing a number of clients with truly disruptive technologies and the reason they are disruptive is because they make money without the subsidies. What will make them killers is that they are based on low cost business models that the incumbents will not be able to compete against.
We are also seeing a massive growth in imbedded generation technologies that require only one fuel source (solar or natural gas)and new technology platforms that will radically change the economics of the hydro, wave and tidal industries by providing true base load power.
And guess what? This is all happening now. Not in ten years, not by 2030. It’s all bubbling away right now!
In my view we are in that wonderful nascent period that the auto industry experience in the late 1800’s. Someone, somewhere is at this very moment working out that breakthrough that takes a niche technology mainstream. And when that happens it won’t matter how much oil you have or how cheap it is.
Sort of like the guys who were selling hay to the stage coach industry, when everyone is driving a car, you are out of business!
Posted 26 March 2009, 23:51 by Michael Johnson
Guess what, neighborhoods and economic activities will be built around geothermal power plants. New inhabitants will pay an upfront fee to live in such places. The population will migrate and its distribution will change, with the more dense populated areas being those with power supply. The new investors’ bubble will be on the energy stocks.
Posted 26 March 2009, 17:01 by PTLdom