Today most of our electricity and the energy we use to power our vehicles come from someplace far away.

Typically it’s a hole in the ground. We use a lot of energy to dig that hole, pull carbon out of the hole—coal, oil, and natural gas, and transport it to a location where we refine and/or store it. Then some energy gets used to transport this fuel to yet another location where we feed it to a massive furnace, creating the heat we need to make steam to spin an electromagnet—more energy gets lost here too. Finally, we lose yet more energy sending it over a long distance to end users. A lot of energy gets lost making energy in our centralized system.

Decentralized energy generation, like solar panels on a roof, eliminate much of this inefficiency. With rooftop solar, photons get turned into electrons where customers use the energy. That cuts out digging the hole, extracting the fuel, hauling it, storing it, burning it, and sending it home. Sunshine on your roof is an effective way to charge a cell phone or power a hybrid car.

In last week’s Sunday New York Times, Al Gore called for the country to invest $400 billion in a “unified national smart grid” so that electricity generated in the desert can be sent to population centers. Not only is that a lot of money to lose electrons going a long distance, it doesn’t take into account the power of localized, decentralized power generation to cost-effectively deliver clean electricity to customers today.

The North American Electricity Reliability Corporation recently reported that new centralized renewable generation—big wind turbines and desert solar—will stress our current electricity grid. However, local solar generation has the opposite effect. When photons become electrons at the point of consumption, consumers demand less power from the grid, thereby making the grid more reliable.

We don’t have to spend $400 billion (or ≈$1,333 for every American) on a new grid to run our cars off solar. Today SunRun customers can charge their cars using the sun from their roofs for 50% of the cost of burning gasoline.

here are other benefits to decentralized renewable energy generation too. For example, it’s hard for our enemies to attack, which is among the reasons why former Director of the CIA Jim Woolsey called on the country to invest in it following September 11^th.

Local renewable generation, like rooftop solar, is an important part of our national energy strategy and is a complementary part of our nation’s changing generation fleet.

Are you in California and interested in solar for your home? Call us at 877.SUN.MOJO or visit our website to learn more.

Posted by: admin on November 14, 2008.

Tagged as: decentralized power, energy, energy generation