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Power Surge: How We're Adding Energy From Below - The Washington Post, August 27, 2001 Looking Locally: A Bottom-Up Energy Solution - commentary on TomPaine.com, August 2, 2001 (Listen Here in Real Audio) Power Trips of the Past - Washington Post, July 29, 2001 Birth Throes of a New Electricity System: The US Experience - Cogeneration and On-Site Power Production, May-June 2001 Solutions to Electricity Crisis - Oakland Tribune, June 5, 2001 Local Innovation Can Fix National Energy Shortages - Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, June 3, 2001 A Bottom Up Energy Policy - Column by David Morris, May 16, 2001 Bush Energy Policy: A Flashback to 1974 - Press Release, May 8, 2001 Interview of David Morris on KPFK Radio in Los Angeles - Real Audio recorded from KPFK Radio, May 2, 2001 Senate, FERC Decisions Contradict Efforts to Build Local Electricity Systems - Press Release, April 27, 2001 When it Comes to Power, Smaller is Better - Rocky Mountain News, March 19, 2001
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Power Trips Of the Past
The earliest utilities were neighborhood affairs. Thomas Edison's first central power plant in lower Manhattan generated 72 kilowatts and served 59 customers in 12 city blocks. But technological improvements gradually pushed small power plants off center stage, and independently produced power virtually disappeared, falling from 60 percent of all electricity generated in the United States in 1900 to less than 4 percent in 1980. Then the trajectory abruptly changed. Rising interest rates in the 1970s made it increasingly expensive to build large power plants, while rising electricity prices and a weakening economy slowed demand. In the 1980s, utilities lost billions of dollars because of unneeded giant power plants. Congress had abolished the electric-utilities monopoly in 1978. Utilities were required to purchase electricity from independent producers as long as these producers relied on renewable fuels such as wind or sunlight, or on higher-efficiency cogeneration technology. The independent power industry grew so rapidly that by 1990, most new electrical capacity was owned by non-utility enterprises. The size of a typical independently owned power plant built that year was closer to that of one built in 1925 than to one built in 1975. And the trend is accelerating. The 30-kilowatt power plant manufactured by California-based Capstone, for example, is a washing-machine- sized microturbine that can supply the electrical needs of a small office building or restaurant. Hospitals in Ontario and California, airports in New York and Michigan, and breweries, retail stores and restaurants in Illinois have already installed their own power plants. Decentralized power is going mainstream. 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
The New Rules Project - http://www.newrules.org/ Questions? E-mail the Webrarian |
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