One of the major themes popping up on dozens of cards is the idea that Smart Grid will facilitate distributed power generation from a variety of resources including PV-shingled rooftops and small home wind turbines to the more exotic as suggested this morning by SD:
A few years ago, I took a roadtrip through upstate New York to visit dairy farmers who were covering ponds filled with manure to run, in one case, converted diesel generators, and in another, highly efficient microturbines. Both farmers put power back onto the grid without the aide of any fancy, newfangled smart grid technology, and continue to convert poop to power even now. But what if, as Quentin suggests:
Quentin’s future scenario is actually now the case in Germany, where over the last ten years PV subsidies have encouraged thousands of homeowners to put solar panel’s on their roofs so they can reap the benefits of feed-in tariffs. While Germany certainly has some smart grid components in place, it is far from being a smart grid country complete. Which begs a chicken and egg question: should countries encourage distributed generation even as they encourage more electricity consumption (think mass adoption of EVs) to combat global warming before they have smart grids in place, or should policy makers slow down and reprioritize, putting smart grids and the investment needed to build them first. Is there any country out there that has a comprehensive policy that ties distributed generation, alternative power, alternative fuel consumption, and smart grids all together in one neat package?
