Forget big wind farms with their pesky transmission issues. Locally produced power is the way forward. (See the richly detailed argument made almost a decade ago in the compelling treatise Small is Profitable). Floundering efforts to get transmission in place for big wind farms highlight the wisdom of Small. T. Boone Pickens' $8B wind program is mucked in a transmission tarpit (maybe among other issues). This Fast Company article plumbs the similarly large, expensive, mired, maybe-someday transmission project Green Path North in California, and gets to the same "power locally" conclusion.
Big Wind and Big Solar may pencil out as cost effective renewable energy solutions, but adding variables like government agency and NIMBY may wreck the cost equation, or put them towards the end of the line in a time equation (back there with Nuke and Big Fossil Plant). Priced holistically and in the real world, distributed renewables might be best, and what we should be focusing on.
Distributed renewables: an old idea to make powr cleanr soonr.
Photo: Darren Rogers on flickr. Also, check out Darren's stuff at RedBubble.
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