viernes, diciembre 21, 2007

Solar and Micro-Wind Breakthroughts?

In Solar and micro wind tax credits, jmaximus9 wrote on 12/13/2007:

I have a better idea, go back to a Carter era style subsides [http://www.dsireusa.org/ ] for installing solar and micro wind and other energy conserving device in the home and small biz sectors... Solar panels should be as common as decks or swimming pools in the southwest [http://renu.citizenre.com/index.php ]. Microwind should be the same way in the great plains [ http://www.windterra.com/ ]... None of these things need major breakthroughs, they are ready to use now... Power to people!


My response is as follows: That solar and micro-wind don’t “need major breakthroughs, they are ready to use now...” seems to be a very good point. However, it is a policy that leads to high inefficiencies under today’s power sector paradigms designed for demand as an externality, resulting in a total lack of coordination with the interconnected power system . EWPC is a paradigm shift which aim to increase total social welfare, by increasing power system coordination and economics while integrating demand.

The major breakthrough required is for those potential “disruptive technologies” to be integrated into power system planning, operation, and control. The glue to integrate them (demand integration) is the development of information technology (intensive) business model innovations by Second Generation Retailers - 2GRs.

To enable such integration, the most important issue is to shift the paradigm from the energy-making business to the energy-moving business (read please the article Nanosolar Breakthrough and the Old Paradigm, which was posted under the piece "Big Solar News: Nanosolar is shipping printed solar cells," also by Kevin Bullis). Solar, micro wind and other renewable investments should compete with in the process to integrate demand to the power system.

Any tax credits should be available to develop all the resources of the demand side, including those of information technology. The resources of the supply side which are energy intensive are already highly developed.