Cool or creepy: microgrids? Let's vote!

By erica20 on Wed, 06/12/2013 - 3:15pm |

Now, if I put on my conspiracy glasses, I’d say that the idea of military, defense and national security contractors building a network of “special” energy grids separate from our ordinary, plebian grid smacks hard of creepy. Especially when you realize that one scenario involves the ability to voluntarily disconnect from the regular power grid for weeks or months at a time. Gotta keep those drones in the air, even if conditions at home aren’t so good.

But, conspiracy glasses off, remote energy generation is where it’s at, right? I’m sure it’s really just that the military industrial complex is all about alternative energy ‘cause it’s cost efficient and good for the planet.

Conspiracy on, conspiracy off. Conspiracy on, conspiracy off. Ouch.

http://www.bens.org/document.doc?id=187

ps I like how this is described as a “volunteer” effort.

pps Worth special consideration is the part about why the energy from these grids should not be shared with surrounding communities. Again--conspiracy on, conspiracy off. It's enough to give Kung Fu Panda a migraine.

URL:

http://www.bens.org/document.doc?id=187

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I remember reading a CBO report over a decade making a case for what they called a distributed grid and at least one of their arguments was defense related. The main idea was that power could be rerouted to non-damaged areas more easily whatever the cause of the outage whether war, terror, natural disasters or Enron.

Around the same time companies with sites in California like FedEx that absolutely positively have to stay operational began installing a lot of solar panels on their roofs.

It was a good idea then and still is. Walmart even thinks so. I recently read that it is planning to make their stores able to operate independent of any grid.

Since I have personal aspirations of being my own microgrid (cloud, too!) I vote in favor.

Now if we can just pry the needed infrastructure rights of way from the grasping hands of the utility dinosaurs.

by EmmaZahn on Wed, 06/12/2013 - 4:04pm

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