When it Comes to Power, Smaller is Better
by David Morris and Daniel Kraker
originally published in Rocky Mountain News, March 19, 2001

The winds of electric panic sweeping east from California have thus far steered blissfully clear of Colorado. But the seeds of the California crisis have been sown elsewhere in the west and around the country.

While California's situation is the result of a number of interrelated factors, at its root is a dearth of generation capacity combined with soaring demand. Colorado currently has plenty of power, but the information economy that is booming in the Denver area is creating a huge demand for more juice.

Colorado's leaders would do well to act now to address a future supply crunch. California's debacle has already spurred states from Washington to Florida into action.

But so far their thinking has relied on old solutions - 1,000 megawatt power plants (that few people, understandably, want located in their back yards) shipping power over high-voltage transmission lines (that citizens don't want running through their neighborhoods). Even nuclear power has emerged from its 30-year hibernation to become a potential power solution.

Colorado shouldn't look to the 1970s for energy policy guidance. Colorado should instead embrace an electricity system of the future. A system, ironically, that is beginning to look a lot like a high-tech version of its past.

Today, power companies are building power plants more typical of those built in 1925 than those built by utilities in 1980. And this technological downsizing is accelerating. Small is once again beautiful.

Honeywell's new 75 kilowatt power plant has about the capacity of Thomas Edison's first power plant. The washing machine-sized turbogenerator can supply the electrical needs of a small store or restaurant. Capstone Turbine makes a microgenerator half that size. They're selling like hotcakes.

In Sacramento, Calif., several hundred homes boast rooftop power plants made of solar cells embedded in shingles. In rural areas, 750 kilowatt wind turbines are the fastest growing source of electricity. Residential-sized fuel cells are poised to hit the market within the next couple years.

The technology of the future is here, but it is being slowed by a regulatory system that was designed nearly 100 years ago to encourage the construction of fleets of huge, distant power plants. The rules need to be rewritten for the 21st century, to allow the new generation of small-scale power plants to flourish.

Texas has taken the lead. It's developing a system for certifying decentralized power plants the way boilers and furnaces are now certified. Along with New York and California, Texas is implementing simplified interconnection standards and tariffs that favor rather than discriminate against self-generation. And it's the only state to develop specific emissions standards for small-scale power plants (these and other electricity rules can be viewed at www.newrules.org/).

Colorado should take a cue from Texas, because they're very similar electrically.

In the future, Colorado may well need new transmission lines and some new central power plants. But we should focus right now on getting more out of what we have.

Over the next few years Colorado will invest millions, if not billions of dollars in its electricity system. The challenge to the state's leaders is how to establish policies that channel entrepreneurial energy and scientific genius and investment capital in directions compatible with Colorado's long- term objectives. Wind farms, on-site co-generation plants, household fuel cells, rooftop solar cells, these are the technologies of the future, technologies that can lay the foundation for a time when Coloradans can be not only consumers of electricity, but producers as well.

David Morris is vice president of the Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance (www.newrules.org) and author of the book Seeing the Light: Regaining Control of Our Electricity System.

More Information:

Institute for Local Self-Reliance
1313 Fifth Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Tel: 612-379-3815
Fax: 612-379-3920
http://www.ilsr.org/