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Project: Greening the grid
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Summary:
On the customer side of the electric meter, in the homes and businesses of utility customers, lie countless opportunities to reduce and improve energy use through higher efficiency, even meeting some of the onsite energy needs by installing their own energy generation systems. This kind of energy production is broadly referred to as distrubuted generation. California is a breeding ground of energy technology innovation that someday will turn old school electricity distribution networks into smarter and stronger interactive grids that will propel the new energy economy of the future. Fuel cells, solar photovoltaic (pv), advanced solar thermal and solar hot water, small renewable generation, net metering, time of use meters, and more effective conservation are some of the innovations on the demand side of the energy equation that we call "Greening the Grid". |
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Recent Developments:
California's energy policies have tended to view each distributed technology, fuel cells, solar pv and others, in isolation. Subsidies and incentive programs are provided in short-term increments which have kept each technology on life support and prevented long-term strategic planning.
With the passage of SB 1 and creation of the California Solar Initiative (CSI) in 2006 California bucked this trend by creating a sustained investment of $3.2 billion over ten years to promote the installation of solar pv systems. By using incentives based on performance the program will encourage technolgical innovation and high quality installations, the program is designed to make the industry cost competitive and self-sustaining within the next ten years.
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