creativforce

Stimulus: How Smart Grid Could Make Out

How can you build a smart grid out of interlinked stupid companies? Most power companies in America are running 40+ year old coal-fired plants, sending energy along 50 year old wires, to analog dials that measure energy use in antiquated homes. That's our Soviet style grid. There is no innovation because there is no competition. If the government throws money at this system without breaking up the local monopolies, that cash will disappear faster than it did at AIG. Nothing is more important to our survival as a nation than new energy. I just don't see it happening within the current system.
The Feds need to build a state-of-the-art interstate grid, and any entrepreneur in America who can sell power to the grid should be allowed to do so in futures style trading.