I was listening to an NPR podcast on my subway ride home today and heard Nancy Pelosi say, “Renewable energy will mean nothing if there’s not a grid to transmit it.”
Well…that’s only if we focus on grid level solutions to our energy problems. But if we focus on distributed power, in the same way we’ve mastered distributed computing, then her comment is not so true.
Distributed power is all about solutions within the grid, at the local level. It’s not about distributing power from wind farms in the middle of nowhere to cities and towns where people actually live via fat pipes. It’s about those same people who live in the cities or towns creating or buying and installing clean energy solutions to meet their own needs.
Her comment is like saying innovations in giant agro-farms will mean nothing to food consumption in the US if we don’t build more highways to get California grapes to Vermont homes. True. But aren’t we starting to develop local food for local consumption so we don’t have to transport California grapes to the east coast?
In the same way, we should be developing local power for local consumption. That way, we don’t tax our outdated utility grid. I’m not saying the grids don’t need updating, just that her comment misses everything going on at the local level.
