Energy Ideas
This week’s Friday picker-upper comes from a CNN Money article about Bob Metcalfe, widely acclaimed as the ‘inventor’ of the internet. Mr Metcalfe has had many successes as innovator and entrepreneur, and he is now turning his creative sights on alternative energy, especially solar power systems. His main point is that the renewable energy field will benefit from the same innovative and entrepreneurial thinking that drove the internet from an experimental oddity to the great technological/social force it is, in just a few decades.
One great point he makes is that we need to stop thinking centrally and begin looking at distributed systems (like the internet) as a way of driving growth and advancement in renewable energy systems. By having more locally-generated power, as well as two-way power grids where everyone could be both a generator and a consumer, the need for huge power plants and massive control systems is at least lessened greatly, if not done away with completely. Distributed generation makes sense in a distributed consumption system.
I wrote an article dealing with this question a while ago, over at eZine articles. Give it a look at eZine. And be sure to see the CNN article here: Bob Metcalfe: For clean energy, look to infotech – Dec. 23, 2008