Living in the greater San Francisco Bay area we are bombarded with all sorts of Eco propaganda. Some of it is good some is not. There has been extensive talk about Smart Grids. In general I am not a fan of this idea – at least for more urban settings. The problem I have is that it still allows for the monopoly of the existing power generating companies and/in fact provides them with more detailed information about your energy usage. While it could be argued that the greater understanding of the use of energy may improve the ability of people to choose when to use power (i.e. cheapest) I don’t see people changing habits very easily. Likewise, it still doesn’t address some of the long-term issues of power generation.

One of my favorite tests going on at the moment is being conducted by the City of Berkeley. This forward thinking community is actually using government dollars to help people get solar panels on their homes today. Basically, the city loans homeowners the money for the upfront installation costs and then the homeowners (if the property changes hands I believe the new owners) pay the city back at a rate close to the normal monthly electric bill of the house. This allows a long payback period for the owners and that money is then reinvested by the city to get more solar panels installed.

I would like to see this taken one step further. I would like to take the excess power generated by these homes during the day and instead of sending it to the power company and have them redistribute it to “who-knows-where” with the recognition that the longer the distance of transmission the greater the leaking of electricity. I would like to keep the electricity local. During these hours (when fewer people are at home) the electricity should go to support community-centric places like schools and municipal buildings. This would allow for an overall reduction in the cost of running municipal buildings without the cost of retrofitting these buildings (which are used mainly during normal work hours). So act globally and produce (and keep) your electricity locally.