The microgrid and the energy crisis

Why the Microgrid Could Be the Answer to Our Energy Crisis

Source: Fast Company (www.fastcompany.com), July 1, 2009

“The evidence is growing that privately owned, consumer-driven, small-scale, geographically distributed renewables could deliver a 100% green-energy future faster and cheaper than big power projects alone. Companies like GE and IBM are talking in terms of up to half of American homes generating their own electricity, renewably, within a decade.”

“..., the killer app comes when you, the consumer, can actually profit by using power intelligently. What we're talking about here is potentially a shift every bit as profound as the switch from mainframes to PCs, or from landlines to cellular -- a movement from behemoth centralized power plants to a network of privately owned, renewable, geographically distributed installations, managed using the same kind of packet-switching software that regulates the flow of information over the Internet.
The microgrid is all about consumer control -- aligning monetary incentives, with the help of information technology, to make renewables and efficiency pay off for the average homeowner, commercial developer, or even a town. The name of the game is to scale up renewables big enough, fast enough, to bring the cost down to parity with conventional resources.”

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