President Obama is pushing an energy independent future to help create new jobs. During his weekly address he stated, “To accelerate the creation of a clean energy economy, we will double our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy like wind, solar, and biofuels over the next three years. We’ll begin to build a new electricity grid that lay down more than 3,000 miles of transmission lines to convey this new energy from coast to coast. We’ll save taxpayers $2 billion a year by making 75% of federal buildings more energy efficient, and save the average working family $350 on their energy bills by weatherizing 2.5 million homes.â€
The House has introduced a bill to increase incentives for renewable energy projects. Incentives include extensions of the production tax credit (PTC), the option to claim the investment tax credit (ITC) in lieu of the PTC or to receive grants in lieu of the PTC or ITC. What all these acronyms really spell is a way to finance renewable energy projects.
The President’s address specifically mentions building an, ‘additional 3,000 miles of transmission lines’, and does not touch on the potential for decentralized power production but the US Department of Energy is soliciting RFPs for distributed energy projects. This could be a very good thing if a recent study of solar storms and the potential for cascading grid failures on an interconnected grid system are correct.
The study, ‘Severe Space Weather Events–Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts’, prepared by the National Science Foundation states that a massive geo-magnetic storm as happened in May 1921 would leave 130 million people without power. Using computer models to emulate today’s interconnected grid the simulation indicates 350 million transformers at risk of permanent damage.
The social consequences extend much further, “…water distribution affected within several hours; perishable foods and medications lost in 12-24 hours; loss of heating/air conditioning, sewage disposal, phone service, fuel re-supply and so on.â€
Within hours telecommunications would stop. GPS navigation, satellite transmissions, radio, banking and transportation would all grind to a halt all as a consequence of the interconnected grid.
Many electric generators require large amounts of water to restart and a lack of water on site would make firing the grid back up almost impossible.
The study concludes that America must upgrade its grid system to withstand geomagnetic storms. Decentralizing power production and distribution would be much cheaper and more reliable. As a matter of national security decentralized energy production makes so much sense.
Thank you for the tip on the book. Peak oil is well upon us, that is for sure. There is more than enough mature technology to solve our energy problems already and if we invested in new emerging technologies, wisely we can thumb our noses at foreign oil and gas.
We need to utilize everything in out power to reduce our dependence on foreign oil including using our own natural resources.OPEC will continue to cut production until they achieve their desired 80-100. per barrel. The high cost of fuel this past year seriously damaged our economy and society. Oil is finite. We are using oil globally at the rate of 2X faster than new oil is being discovered. We need to take some of these billions in bail out bucks and bail ourselves out of our dependence on foreign oil. Jeff Wilson has a really good new book out called The Manhattan Project of 2009 Energy Independence Now. He explores our uses of oil besides gasoline, our depletion, out reserves and stores as well as viable options to replace oil.Oil is finite, it will run out in the not too distant future. The historic high price of gas this past year did serious damage to our economy and society. WE should never allow others to have that much power over our economy again. Everyone of our elected officials needs to read this book as well as our school children.