We are all familiar with the vulnerabilities of our power system. Events like Hurricane Sandy, the 2011 San Diego blackout, and other widespread outages are all-too common. Our power system depends on centralized generation and long-distance transmission— making it susceptible to massive failures. On an average day, nearly a half million Americans spend at least two hours without electricity. Brownouts and blackouts cost the country up to $188 billion annually.
The antiquated nature of the U.S. grid has been discussed for over a decade, with little progress. Germany and other European countries have already demonstrated the technical feasibility and economic viability of modern power systems. Germany – the world’s fourth largest economy – has a power system with a huge amount of rooftop solar. In 2011, it set a global reliability record with less than 16 minutes of downtime. The U.S. spends about 50 times longer in the dark than Denmark, which gets 40% of its power from renewables.
A modern power system takes advantage of the latest technologies – such as increased distributed generation and smart grid techniques – to meet the growing demand for reliable energy. Despite broad claims that renewable energy is unreliable and expensive, the opposite has been proven true in Europe.
If the U.S. fails to invest in a 21st-century power system, the costs will be far greater than the cost of making the transition to a modern system. It is time to get to work.
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Web Links
Distributed Generation + Intelligent Grid
http://www.clean-coalition.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Policy-Brief-33_zf-22-May-2013.pdf
Photo, taken on August 11, 2009, courtesy of Port of San Diego via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. Support for Earth Wise comes from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY.