3 Big Ideas for the Electric Grid Edge
By Elisa Wood, Energy Changemakers
I have no doubt we will look back on this time as a Renaissance era of energy. We are experiencing an awesome level of innovation that's not only greening our energy supply but also unleashing electricity's new economic and social potential.
Here are 3 concepts to watch for the influence I suspect they will have.
‘Move fast and break things’ may be an admired strategy in Silicon Valley, but it’s a fearsome notion for electric utilities. Their regulatory pact holds them responsible for keeping the lights on, making them wary (right or wrong) that too much innovation will break the grid, and they’ll pay the price.
So I was fascinated when I heard about Ann Arbor, Michigan’s approach to energy innovation, as explained by Missy Stults, the city’s sustainability director, in our new podcast, A Campaign to Create a Distributed Energy Utility in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
You might say that Ann Arbor has figured out a way to move fast without creating fear that it’s breaking things or breaking up an investor-owned utility. The proposal still needs voter approval.
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Bruce Nordman of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab proposes a reimagined, customer-centric electric grid, similar to the Internet, where “simple and universal” technologies work the same everywhere.
"In order to create Internet technology, we didn’t modify the phone system. We had to throw away a whole lot of the assumptions about how it works and replace them with something better,” he said.
Nordman explained the "something better"— a radically different approach to electricity pricing — in an Energy Changemakers live stream discussion.
An abbreviated version of the live stream is available on YouTube . The full one-hour discussion, including Q&A with the audience, is available to premium members of the Energy Changemakers Community .
Chase Weir , founder and chairman of the Earthshot Foundation, argues that society needs a new narrative arc around clean energy and critical minerals, one that centers on what he calls a "nonzero" future.
"Scarcity creates a zero-sum game — one's loss is another's gain. In contrast, nonzero thinking focuses on abundance and compounding gains. Prosperous, intelligent and sustainable systems will help us preserve natural capital and create a livable planet for all. Nonzero is the path to net zero," Weir said.
You can learn more about the nonzero concept at the final event in the nine-part Terranaut Minologues: Restoring Trust in Mining, a collaboration of Earthshot Foundation and OurEnergyPolicy, Oct. 7, 2024, at The REACH at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC.
If you're going, let me know! I'll be moderating a panel with speakers Jana Gerber, President of Microgrids NA, Schneider Electric; Paula Glover, President of Alliance to Save Energy; and Mariko Geronimo Aydin, Founder of Lumen Energy Strategy. More details are here .
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