“Updating the grid is far easier said than done. In fact, it’s a massively expensive slow-moving bureaucratic nightmare.“
“Climate Change are causing increasingly frequent and long-lasting blackouts across the country.”
The energy grid can be thought of as a massive ecosystem with a huge variety of organisms – asset owners, manufacturers, service providers, and government officials at Federal, state, and local levels – and now decentralized and variable prosumers. And right now that ecosystem isn’t doing so hot.
How Renewable Energy Prosumers Are Decentralizing The Power Grid
This roadblock has been the jumping off point for many innovative ideas for alternative ways of interacting with the grid, or of avoiding the grid entirely. New and imaginative energy systems such as decentralized microgrids, use of the blockchain to regulate and manage prosumer markets, and local energy communities have received increasing attention from private investors and public figures alike. One of the most promising ideas to arise from this hotbed of innovation is the concept of local energy markets (LEMs).
LEMs would allow prosumers to buy and sell energy amongst each other based on their individual needs via a trading platform managed by a local utility, which takes a percentage of every transaction.
The International Energy Agency.
The targeted outcome is a system in which diverse production and consumption needs can be accommodated while simultaneously stabilizing the power grid.
The International Energy Agency estimates that annual investments in energy sector infrastructure and technologies will need to increase four-fold from current levels to reach $4 trillion by 2030 in order to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. It’s a tall order, to say the least. In fact, it’s not even performing well in the current moment, as a higher frequency of extreme weather events attributed to climate change are causing increasingly frequent and long-lasting blackouts across the country. But updating the grid is far easier said than done. In fact, it’s a massively expensive slow-moving bureaucratic nightmare.
Summertime in Texas brings the scorching heat, and since the 2021 winter blackouts, it also serves up a heaping portion of frenzy about the health of the state’s main power grid. Despite setting electricity demand records nearly a dozen times since April, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) power grid lived up to its name.
Governor Abbott continues working to ensure the substantial bipartisan reforms passed by the House and Senate last year are properly implemented so that the grid remains stable and reliable.”
Media News Global Voices 