A Look Ahead Richard Perez Have you ever wondered what America's electric power structure could be like in ten years? I am constantly gazing into my crystal ball and wondering where our power will come from in the year 2002. Speculation? We do our best to publish real and useful information in Home Power. We try to keep speculation, untried ideas, and technical fantasies out of our publication. We are technical crew and interested in things that work. We much prefer pie on the plate to pie in the sky. ButÉ During the last year our nation's attitude to renewable energy has changed. We didn't see this on the nightly news, or read about it in the newspapers. The change become apparent slowly in our conversations with RE users, equipment manufacturers, and public utilities. America is finally ready to accept renewable energy sources as a working realities. This acceptance not only gives us great joy and hope, but also the courage and certainty to share our view of the future with you. So join me for a ride on my time machine. A trip to 2002 The first thing we notice in the year 2002 is that all the buildings have photovoltaics (PVs) on their roofs. These PV arrays are everywhere, on each home, business, and even standing by themselves. Wind generators dot the countryside in windy locations. A quick peek inside these structures reveals that there are no batteries. Instead, each renewable energy site is equipped with a synchronous inverter feeding the PV- produced electric power to the nationwide gird. Everywhere we look, electric vehicles are charging up at parking meters, parking lots, and in garages. The national electric grid functions as our battery and distribution network. Here's how it all happened. Public Utilities- America's powerful servants During the mid-1990s America's public utilities were struggling to keep up with the demand for electric power. Afternoon brownouts had become a common occurrence. To the utilities' credit, they were doing all they could to provide reliable and continuous power, but they were being hamstrung by their rate-payers. Americans were just not interested in having a new coal-fired, or oil-fired, or nuclear power plant in their neighborhood. We weren't interested in having any more new powerlines strung across our already littered landscape. We wanted the juice, and we wanted it to be produced by clean and sustainable power sources. What's a power company to do? America's public utilities turned to the only major energy sources left to them: solar, wind, and hydro. They discovered what home power users had known for decades, that renewables work better and cheaper than burning fossil fuels or nuclear fission. In the early days of this primarily solar-powered transition, the utilities wrestled with a tough question. Who would own these renewable power sources? Would the utilities themselves own the PV arrays, the wind generators, and the hydroelectric plants, and then rent the power to their customers as usual? Or would these energy sources be owned by individuals and these individuals would become, in effect, micro power companies. Well oddly enough, the utilities decided to let go of their monopoly on power production and concentrate on what was to become their major business- power storage and distribution. In many ways having the individuals own their particular PV array, or wind turbine, or microhydro plant made perfect technical and economic sense to the utilities. The major problem with solar and wind from a utility's point of view is that the source is not constant. The wind doesn't blow at a steady speed all the time, and the sun sets every evening. Having many independent and widely distributed power sources contributing ensured a constant and reliable power supply for the grid. Suddenly, America's power companies didn't need to build any new power plants. The utilities decided to electrolyze water and store the incredible power surplus generated by the millions of RE sources nationwide as hydrogen. This hydrogen was then used nightly to fire their already-in-place turbines. Local production and consumption of the electric power took the distribution burden off of the utilities. They didn't need to build new power lines. The distribution network already in place was much larger than required because most of the power wasn't being shipped great distances. The power was being used in exactly the same place it was being produced. This was a relief to the utilities as they had never figured out how to counteract the health hazards inherent in large scale, high voltage, power transmission. Every Home is a Power Producer The RE sources we see everywhere are owned by individuals. Each homeowner has purchased a PV array and/or other RE power source. These RE sources are coupled to the grid through a synchronous inverter. RE-produced power is either consumed directly on site, or fed to grid through a bi-directional power meter. This power meter measures the amount of electricity that the individual system either supplied to or received from the grid. Folks with PV arrays and/or wind generators producing more than their home consumes receive a monthly check from the utility. Folks who consume more power than they produce pay the utility at the end of the month. The grid has become a power broker instead of the sole power producer. Storage was the problem The utilities took a monumental step in cleaning up our environment and in ensuring their own existence by storing power as hydrogen. Each local utility set up banks of electrolyzers which produced billions of cubic feet of hydrogen gas daily. In 2002,the stored hydrogen is burned in turbines that were once fired by coal, oil, natural gas or nuclear fission. By converting their turbines to hydrogen fuel, the utilities stopped emitting carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. They ceased contributing to the Greenhouse Effect. The turbines' combustion byproduct is pure water, a far cry from the pollutants of the last century. The more forward thinking utilities have already switched from turbines to the higher efficiency and reliability of the new fuel cells. Energy Life in 2002 Most buildings are energy autonomous. Each home, office, and industrial plant makes most of the power that they use, and many export energy, for profit, to the grid. Brownouts and blackouts have become a thing of the past. Water and even some space heating is accomplished by evacuated tube, solar thermal collectors. These evacuated tubes, first developed in Ireland during the '80s, revolutionized the way things got hot. Buildings now use solar architecture principles Ð direct solar gain, superinsulation, and thermal mass. All the oil, coal, and natural gas that were once burned as fuel are now left in the ground where Mother Nature put them, or used sparingly as input to the recycled plastics industry. Transportation in 2002 The renewable electric revolution complemented the ongoing revolution in transportation. Combustion of any type of carbon-based fuel is now limited to specialized vehicles such as some long distance aircraft. Electric automobiles have been in common use since the late '90s. The RE sources located everywhere are used to recharge these early, battery based, electric vehicles. These vehicles are now being replaced by electric cars using hydrogen storage and fuel cells to supply their electric motors. Many residences and car parks, are now equipped with smaller versions of the utility electrolyzers. These smaller electrolyzers are used to recharge hydrogen/electric vehicles. The society of 2002 is inherently less dependent on transportation. Many people now work primarily at home and the daily commute has become a rarity. With the decentralization of electric power production came the decentralization of manufacturing. Goods that were once produced in a single location and shipped nationwide are now made and consumed locally. The Environment of 2002 The overwhelming energy and environmental worries of the '90s have been replaced with the certainly that things are indeed getting better. While the Earth still shows the scars of a society bent on fossil fuel consumption, the environmental effects of our oil binge are lessening. The atmosphere's carbon dioxide content has dropped and global warming was halted before it destroyed the planet. Stand-alone RE Systems in 2002 When the utility grid converted to RE sources in the late '90s, it also stopped extending its powerlines. Most areas not already serviced by the grid became entirely energy self-sufficient and were never connected to the grid. These systems use their own hydrogen storage and fuel cells to store locally produced power. In many ways, these modern stand-alone systems are identical to early home power systems except they don't use batteries anymore. What next? New energy systems are being concocted daily within a large and growing industry. One of the latest, a combination concentrating PV array (500 suns!) and solar heater, promises to unify the production of electric power and thermal energy into a single package. Fuel cells the size of an grapefruit are now producing over 5 kiloWatts and at efficiencies greater than 95%. New lights using light emitting diodes (LEDs) are yielding ultrabright, white lamps with lifetimes in the centuries. Ultrasonic clothes washers have replaced the clumsy mechanical types. And I hear rumors that the gravity sled may be up and workingÉ Meanwhile back in 1992É Thanks for taking an imaginary trip into the future with me. I wrote this to describe what I see as our most possible and maybe even most desirable energy future. There are, in fact, many possible futures, most less rosy that the one I described here. The real future is up to you and me. I'm ready for a change. How about you? Access Author: Richard Perez, c/o Home Power, POB 130, Hornbrook, CA 96044 ¥ 916-475-3179