Why We Should Democratize the Electricity System (Part 1)

August 23, 201113 years ago John Farrell 8 Comments

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References

[2] Del Chiaro, Bernadette. California’s Solar Cities. (Environment California Research & Policy Center, Summer 2009). Accessed 3/21/11 at http://tinyurl.com/mnhhld.

[3] Gipe, Paul. New California Governor Jerry Brown Calls for Feed-in Tariffs. (Renewable Energy World, 1/3/11). Accessed 6/20/11 at http://tinyurl.com/26hxmvy.

[4] Farrell, John. Southern California Edison Buys 250 MW of Distributed Solar PV for Less Than Electricity from Natural Gas (Energy Self Reliant States blog, 2/2/11). Accessed 02/02/2011 at http://tinyurl.com/5sod46o.

[5] Other events indicating a distributed generation future:

Vermont has introduced a pilot CLEAN Contract (a.k.a. feed-in tariff) program that offers a long term premium price for wind, solar PV, hydro, landfill gas, farm methane, and biomass electricity generation under 2 MW. Hawaii offers a similar program, but with a project size cap of 5 MW.
Gainesville, FL, San Antonio, TX, and Sacramento, CA’s municipally owned electricity utilities have introduced long term premium priced contracts for distributed solar power.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has required utilities to identify “sweet spots” on their distribution lines to encourage distributed generation that maximizes the benefits to the existing grid.
In Minnesota, the state legislature required the state’s utilities to identify a no-cost and least-cost plan for adding 1,200 MW of distributed wind power.
In some regions, renewable energy represents over 15 or 20 percent of grid electricity, providing the first field tests for a future grid based on distributed generation.
Several communities, including San Diego, CA, and many universities have conducted energy independence studies to determine how to get 100 percent of their electricity from nearby, renewable resources. Boulder, CO, is considering municipalization of its electricity system to increase renewable energy production.
In April 2011, the Distributed Network Protocol (DNP) Users Group issued the first industry standard to allow solar inverters to interact efficiently with other “smart grid” technologies, allowing utilities to “talk” to and control these devices if necessary.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has proposed that demand response be compensated as if it were actual generation, giving it sounder footing against power generators.
Electric vehicles are entering the market. More than 100,000 are expected to be on U.S. roads by 2012.
A number of utilities in Texas, Minnesota, North Carolina and elsewhere are testing energy storage technologies to smooth production from variable renewable energy generators.
Several European nations have enacted standards for new buildings to be net zero energy consumers–any use of imported fossil fueled electricity is offset by on-site generated energy that is exported to the grid, by 2020.

[6] Farrell, John and David Morris. Energy Self-Reliant States, 2nd edition. (ILSR, October 2009). Accessed 6/15/11 at http://tinyurl.com/yaywu42.

[7] Gipe, Paul. New Record for German Renewable Energy in 2010. (wind-works.org, 3/24/11). Accessed 3/29/11 at http:// tinyurl.com/4af2avk.

[8] Lovins, Amory, et al. Small is Profitable: The Hidden Economic Benefits of Making Electrical Resources the Right Size. (Rocky Mountain Institute, 2002).