Repower America

Repower America is all about exactly what its logo says it's about:

It wants America within ten years to burn fossil fuels no longer: coal, oil, gasoline, natural gas. We need to switch to wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and other renewables; start building more nuclear power plants, which are much safer than they used to be; and convert our existing fossil-fuel power plants to capture and store their carbon pollution.

One of the initiatives Repower America supports is the Unified National Smart Grid. The grid which transmits electric power to your home or business from the plants that generate it needs updating. This is a so-called "infrastructure" project that needs doing anyway, as grid inadequacies currently cause blackouts and brownouts all the time. The inadequacies are "reported [see here and here] to cost the nation $80 billion to $188 billion per year in losses due to grid-related power outages and power quality issues."

The current grid in the U.S. is an antiquated patchwork that was anything but intelligently designed. If we're going to be forced to update it — and we are — why not spend the extra money that it would take to make it truly a marvel of 21st-century technology?

If we did that, then clean electricity generated anywhere in America — with an emphasis on the anywhere — could power homes and businesses across the nation. Homeowners and businesses could pick and choose among power sources nationwide, and could opt to buy some or all of their power from green/clean sources, even if it meant accepting a higher charge per kilowatt-hour.

To make that possible, national electricity "interstates" could be built to use advanced high-voltage power lines to move power to where it is needed more quickly and cheaply than is currently possible. There would also be high-tech power management facilities that could rapidly open up the equivalent of "extra lanes" in the interstate so that, say, "smart-grid operators can capitalize on a wind power plant with ample wind in the Dakotas when they expect rising air conditioning use on a hot day in Miami. Or hydropower storage can be quickly dispatched if winds are expected to temporarily subside."

Also, the local smart grids that feed into the national smart grid would buy and sell power from its customers' households and businesses. That's right: if you erected (say) a wind turbine or solar panel array on your property or building, and on a given day it generated more electric power than you were presently using, the excess power would move out onto the grid, where it would be sold at the going rate. The proceeds would go into your account at the electric company, where they could be used to reduce your electric bill. (Or it could be used for other purposes. Anyone see a merger between the local electric company and PayPal on the horizon?)

The ability to sell power back to the grid would depend on our switching our house or business to using a "smart meter [that] can spin both ways." With one of those, we could even sell back power that we had previously "downloaded" to a plug-in hybrid car.

Meanwhile, businesses and individuals would be able to monitor their energy costs in real time and make choices to lower their bills by adjusting their activities, allowing less stress on the grid and reduce electricity bills.

The Unified National Smart Grid is just one of the initiatives that Repower America supports in its bid to wean us off dirty, greenhouse gas-emitting energy sources in a decade. If you like their ideas, please consider joining the over-two million people who have already endorsed them by entering your email address and first and last name in the form on their home page.