photo credit: JASON ANFINSEN

Last weekend, an op-ed piece by Ian Bowles was published in the New York Times that set forth the case for “Home Grown Power.”  Mr. Bowles made some excellent points regarding community based, distributed generation power, which would obviate the need for new, expensive transmission lines.  We all know that ample renewable energy resources exist in the United States.  The question is how to bring power from the source of generation to the people that need to use it.

The old model required construction of transmission lines like the one above, which run over $2M per mile to get permitted and built.  Not included in this cost is the value of power that is “lost” along the way when it travels from source to user.  Bowles observes:

“Unlike our federal highway system, which is needed to transport goods across the country, or the “information superhighway” of the Internet, which is the fastest way to carry information around the world, long-distance transmission lines have no inherent value. On the contrary, the farther electricity is transported, the more of it is dissipated. “Line loss,” as this is called, gobbles up an estimated 2 percent to 3 percent of electricity nationally.”

One way to address these issues is to include the cost of transmitting power in its the overall price.  Market forces should then encourage the development of cheaper energy generation, which will likely result in local, renewable energy projects.

Bowles concludes:

“For a clean energy future, we need a smart grid and we need more renewable energy. The Obama administration is offering welcome support for both. Beyond that, what we need is a level playing field that enables energy providers to compete fairly with one another. The cost of transmission should be incorporated into the overall cost of bringing clean energy to market. Then let the chips fall — and wind turbines rise — where they may.”

This is why distributed generation makes sense.  This is what we are promoting at Build, Baby Build.

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