creativforce

A Very Smart Plan for Federal Smart Grid Grants

Can you think of another industry where walking door to door to read an analog meter would be considered a valuable use of an employee's time?

A Very Smart Plan for Federal Smart Grid Grants

Ok, if I am the president of a regional power conglomerate like NIPSCO in northern Indiana (I call him Mr. Burns). I have thousands of workers trained to perform repetitive tasks maintaining coal-fired power plants and analog equipment. The more energy my customers use, the more money I make. My customers are billed monthly. I have no competitors. My customers have no choice but to pay me. The only rights my customers have come through consumer protection groups who lobby the state government when they set my profit margins. As the president of this company I can only make more profit by encouraging consumption. I do this by helping to fund more urban sprawl and by discounting my prices to manufacturers (encouraging their wastefulness.)

What possible motive do I have for buying efficient battery storage for reliable, green, renewable, or digital technology?

I see a "build it and they will come" mentality at work here. The US government can give money to great ideas until it hurts. But just because a much better technology exists doesn't mean it will be purchased and used.

I see great inventions begging for a market, not a market begging for great inventions.

The US could spend nothing and force Mr. Burns to meet certain federally mandated standards (like the state government in CA has done). If Burns can't make money the old way, he will find a new way. In CA, PG&E and other local monopolies are scrambling to buy renewable energy because the law says they must.

Carbon trading could also create a big market for batteries and renewables.

The government could also rewrite laws to make distributed generation profitable for home owners and small businesses. That would be the most efficient, smart, safe and reliable way to solve the energy problem. And eventually it would make Mr. Burns obsolete. 100 million energy producers is better than a few hundred (plus it would create a dramatically more dynamic market for these products).

Large scale energy production and transmission is terribly wasteful. Those enormous smoke stacks and cooling towers aren't just "blowing smoke" they are wasting 25% of the energy they produce. Those crackling transmission lines aren't just making noise, they are wasting 30% of the energy that flows through them.

You can water and fertilize a seed all you want, but it won't grow in the winter. The government needs to change the season and the seeds will grow. Energy storage stocks would be the hottest thing since GOOG, if the government would focus their efforts on developing a market rather than on the financial problems within these wonderful small companies.

Hopefully the EPA's recent decision to regulate CO2 will force Mr. Burns to buy these products. Incentive should lead invention, because in the morning when we Americans have a problem we get to work and fix it. The way it is now, Mr. Burns has no problems.