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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JeffA who wrote (29)	9/5/2006 4:07:51 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Respond to of 10087

If you have no power company, that seems to imply you have no grid (Omaybe). Then you have no way to ship any excess power for sale to others. Now you might have a community or state-owned or large privately owned grid that takes a cut of your sale as a transportation cost. Then you could have both small indepent generaton and a back-up in case of failure. But a significant portion of power costs to the consumer is in that grid and metering of production and usage. Those HAVE to be solved to make independent generation practical.

To: JeffA who wrote (29)	9/5/2006 4:44:33 PM
From: cirrus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10087

I'd hesitate to say "never". As independent generation becomes more common and economical the power grid will evolve to the benefit both the utility power producer and independent local producer. Already we've seen utilities offering incentives to use power at off peak times, use energy efficient machinery and conserve in other ways as alternative to building new plants and transmission facilities. The cost of building and fueling large generating plants and transmission networks is increasing - and no one wants a big generating plant or transmission tower next door - while the cost of independent generation in the form of wind, solar and fuel cells is declining. Solar, especially, is falling rapidly. I doubt the grid will go away in our lifetime, but I think we'll see independent, local power production increase to meet more of our needs. At some point the grid may become obsolete. Look at cellular phone service. People in developing nations are finding it more economical to build a cell tower and use cell phones rather than build out a land based phone network. In a hundred years the same be be true for electric power distribution. Well, all I am trying to say is we need both, until independent generation is proven or unproven. It will never be as economical as buying from a Utility. The economies of scale cannot be compared.