Liberated energy: How distributed generation can help us

GUEST EDITORIAL BY CHRIS DETJEN, PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT MANAGER, NEXTENERGY

Technology has often had a liberating effect on humankind, but sometimes the social benefits seem to be greatest when the technology itself is liberated. For example, the rise of personal computers drove computing toward a more human scale, enabling millions of people to own machines of their own and freeing them from the tightly controlled confines that once required users to be fluent in a specialized programming language.

Today, we are faced with an opportunity to do the same with America’s electric infrastructure. In power, the status quo is one of centralization. For example, a report by the State of California’s Energy Commission found that the state provided for just 2.5 percent of its 2004 power demands with “distributed” generating assets — assets located close enough to a load that they did not require their output to be transmitted over high-voltage power lines. Under such circumstances, ordinary people have little opportunity to interact with the systems that make our electricity. This makes it hard for us to experience the satisfaction and educational benefits that come with controlling one’s own electricity supply, and harder still to comprehend the sobering amounts of fossil fuel consumed and greenhouse gas pollution emitted by the facilities that power our lives.

Our centralized approach to power is also inefficient, wasting about 6 percent of our generated electricity each year in the form of transmission and distribution (T&D) line losses. Finally, the centralized approach fails to tap into the innovative capabilities of ordinary citizens. If hobbyists and garage tinkerers can create ingenious iPhone apps and build their own jet packs, who can say what improvements they might make, with greater access, to distributed solar and wind energy configurations?

The energy and climate challenges we face are complex, and a national move toward distributed generation will not solve them by itself. For one thing, distributed generating technologies are not clean or desirable by definition — an America powered by distributed gasoline or diesel generators would be a nightmare. For another, it may not be possible to displace all centralized generating assets with distributed ones, while ensuring a safe and reliable power supply. But we can certainly do better than we’ve done so far.

By placing a priority on low-carbon, distributed electricity, other countries have succeeded in accelerating the transition to clean, human-scale power. A 2009 study found that Denmark produces more than 45 percent of its power with distributed assets—a result achieved through the Danish government’s deliberate efforts to promote cogeneration, energy conservation and renewable power (especially wind).

Since the passage of the Public Utilities Regulatory and Policy Act of 1978 (PURPA), which confirmed the right of non-utility electricity generators to connect with the grid, U.S. energy law has slowly evolved to admit more and more distributed generation. The states of California, Vermont, and Oregon and a number of municipal utilities around the country have recently adopted feed-in tariffs, which guarantee a per-kilowatt-hour premium for home and business owners who feed power from small-scale renewable systems onto the grid. These are small steps in the march toward a more “liberated” U.S. energy infrastructure, which offers untold benefits for our workforce, our local economies and our environment. As state legislatures around the country discuss feed-in tariffs and Congress weighs new clean energy legislation, let us hope that the march continues.