More on yesterday’s post about the power grid. There is every reason to believe that user-based power generation is a very possible and profitable way to go to prevent having to totally rebuild our grid system. Think about the acres of flat (usually black) rooftops in every city and industrial center. Look at how Germany is capitalizing on those acres by installing solar collectors and in some case wind turbines.
There is a Toronto-based furniture retailer who is working to bring his buildings off-grid, using solar and geothermal installations. There is a building in Abu Dhabi that is being designed from scratch by a Chicago architect to be 100% energy independent, with the probability of being able to provide excess power to its neighbors. How does this tax the power grid? (a rhetorical question, unless somebody knows something different.)
If this were to be coupled with advances in energy conservation like better building practices and recovering smokestack heat, such as the design at the University of Toronto, the grid system could be saved by reducing the load, which is much cheaper and safer than increasing the capacity.
This doesn’t even begin to address the benefits to cities and towns that decentralized production would produce. Lower cost (a feature of those cities who already have municipal power) and improved security (how would one stage an attack on a thousand or more independent producers?) seem to make local production more and more the reasonable way to go. Take the trillions that are being talked about for upgrading the grid and put just 10% of that into distributed production, and we’ll see a much cleaner and better country within our lifetimes.
See the fine article by Jay Somerset in the Toronto Globe and Mail.