The New York Times had an article today about how some wind farms are bumping up against the limitations of our Grid system. This is no surprise, because we don't have an electricity superhighway in this country. It's time for one.
We need an Electranet, just like Al Gore recommended in 2006 in his Newsweek essay. http://www.newsweek.com/... ... http://electranet.com has more information about this idea. (It’s not a company. It’s an idea for an Internet... but for electricity. It is the Democratization of energy. )
T-Boon Pickens’ huge wind farm idea perpetuates the feudal model. He wants us to give him a huge gift so he can build his own wind farm that makes him all the money. We can’t allow that to happen. Instead of the lord/serf model that we use for electricity now, which has one electric utility generating all the power, and a bunch of homes and businesses connected, sucking up and using that power, in an Electranet model, everybody has the ability to not only use, but to also generate power. Once the smart electrical network is built, then anybody can plug in, any time, anywhere, and either send or receive energy--just like they can with the Internet, for data.
If you follow that type of topology and model to its logical conclusion, you will see there gets to be no cost per kilowatt hour, just like there is practically no cost for a byte of data transfer on the internet today. Why is that? Because the sun drops as much energy onto the planet in 40 minutes as humanity uses in a year. I’m not even counting wind. If each house had solar panels, shingles, or paint, or whatever cool new technology there will be, and wind farmers popped up wherever they wanted to, we would rapidly find ourselves generating more energy than we needed. We would charge all our vehicles on the Electranet, and run all our homes on the Electranet, and run all our equipment on the Electranet, and as the cost of solar capture materials and equipment went down each year, we would find our energy needs solved and then some. There would be incentive to convert every surface that gets any sunlight on it into a surface that can generate electricity. With solar paint, fabrics, road surfaces, etc. we will be getting electricity instead of baking everything every day.
If I told somebody in 1977 that they would be able to call Paris all month long every day for hours from New York, and not get a $6,000 phone bill, they would have laughed in my face. But now with the Internet, I could be on the video phone with Paris 24/7 and not pay an extra dime. That is what the Internet did for data. Now lets see what an Electranet can do for energy.
We need a government built, electricity superhighway. It needs to be possible for somebody to build a wind farm and plug into the Electranet without any permits, approvals, and red tape of any kind. They should just be able to plug in... Just like a user can go buy any old type of computer and plug into the Internet today. The model that allows users to say to government, and big business, and large utilities: "I’m innovating here so get out of my way." Is, in my humble opinion, the best model possible.
At first there can be meters. But instead of receiving power from the utility, we could send or receive power just into the Electranet. Those who need more than they generate would have to pay something into some fund. Those who generate more than they need would automatically be paid at prevailing market rates.
As the network gets to have more and more power generating users, we may get to a model similar to the one in Germany, where everybody is required by law to have solar panels. Then, having a meter is just a way to encourage users to figure out more energy efficient ways to become a net positive contributor, rather than a net user of power.
When it comes to politics, I can guarantee you 100% that an Electranet will never come into being under McCain. He is too beholden to his big energy lobbyists to even conceive of democratizing energy this way. He still doesn’t even know how to get ON to the internet. Never mind creating a whole new one for electricity.
Obama, who has been endorsed by Al Gore, surely knows all about Gore's Electranet idea, and he understands the national security implications of having a decentralized power grid that doesn't count on huge power stations to serve the public's needs. If you want to stop paying "per gallon" for your travel needs, and you don’t want to worry about heating or cooling, or energy in your life, the answer is clear.