Excellent read from Mark Culpepper, "Lessons from the Boom Years: Datacomm and Electricity - Not that Far Apart.
Key except:
"In the context of the electricity markets, the transmission congestion that plagues much of today's grid bears a striking resemblance to the problems of the data networks in the 1990s. Traditional utilities are trying to solve the problem by building bigger transmission facilities and larger power plants.
However, the rules of the game are changing with the emergence of a highly distributed system of renewable generation and storage technologies located close to the point of consumption.
The GE's, Evergreen's and Capstone's of the world are ensuring that the energy equivalents of the cheap CPU - distributed generation technologies such as wind, solar, or gas turbines - will be available for years to come.
Just as critical are the evolutionary leaps in electricity storage technologies being delivered by companies like VRB Power, A123 and EEStor. These companies, and others like them, are providing the electrical equivalent of the cheap hard drive.
Combined, these two technologies are enabling the creation of an entirely new type of type of service provider, something akin to a Utility Service Provider, delivering services that existing utilities can't or won't deliver. The end results will be a more reliable, higher quality grid with more predictable pricing and a much larger variety of differentiated offers based on quality of service and price."
Full story here: renewableenergyaccess.com. |
