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The World is Moving Toward the Development of the 'Power Cloud,' Whether It Knows It Or Not [Breaking Energy]
[June 23, 2014]

The World is Moving Toward the Development of the 'Power Cloud,' Whether It Knows It Or Not [Breaking Energy]


(Breaking Energy Via Acquire Media NewsEdge)   We could all learn to get along without cell phones. And many of us are already learning to get along without cable TV. But civilization as we know it could not get along without electricity, which makes the electric industry – the generation, transmission and delivery of power – one of our most vital, if not the most vital industry of all. Today that industry, which has existed in essentially the same rock-solid form for a century, stands on the threshold of major disruption, and the stakes are enormous. To pick just one example of tectonic changes ahead, consider the recent prediction by retired Duke Energy Chairman Jim Rogers that by mid-century, "virtually every power plant in this country will be retired and replaced." There is industry-wide agreement on the inevitability of massive disruption driven by the convergence of such historical developments as climate change, renewable (solar and wind) and non-utility-generated energy sources and new approaches to government oversight and regulation. Beyond that single point of agreement, however, chaos and conflict appear to reign. The public airwaves and halls of government are filled with what appear to be competing, and well-financed, voices – coal vs. renewables vs. natural gas vs. nuclear, and investor-owned, government-regulated utilities vs. independent communities, businesses and organizations fighting to produce and control their own power, to cite just two of many apparent clashes.



If we could take one step back from the current electric industry battleground and adopt the long view, we might see there's no real battle going on at all. Instead, what we're seeing are growth spurts – loud and admittedly painful at times – of the development of a "Power Cloud" that will encompass and connect all currently clashing parties to achieve a single end on which all agree: the provision of safe, reliable, affordable and environmentally responsible electric service to businesses and consumers.

The technology industry, as it developed decades ago, learned fundamental lessons from the electric industry's experience with distributed power generation and transmission. Now it's the electric industry's turn to learn from tech, which has developed a global, distributed form of computing, known as the cloud that allows people and companies around the world to work together through shared standards that protect the Internet backbone that ties everything together. In the same manner, the electric industry is working its way – noisily and often awkwardly– toward a flexible, standards-based Power Cloud with the grid at its center that will allow anyone who honors those standards to plug into the grid to generate or use energy. The Power Cloud will bring the benefits of information technology (IT) to the capabilities of the energy industry's operational technology (OT).


We see evidence of the Power Cloud's development at all levels. New York State, for example, recently proposed a complete rethinking of the electric industry's century-old business model that would evolve investor-owned utilities from monopoly generators and distributors of power to what some have called "traffic cops", directing energy produced in thousands of widely distributed sites by all sorts of technologies. That police metaphor, I'd argue, is inexact and implies unnecessary coercion. Far better to see what New York State is moving toward as part of a collaborative Power Cloud.

Across the country, in the San Francisco Bay Area, there is an array of independent power producers (IPPs) ranging from individual communities to regional alliances such as Marin Clean Energy. Most are generating energy from solar, and one, All Power Labs of Oakland, is making electricity from biomass – nutshells, wood chips, corncobs and other forms of garbage. Fast Company recently called All Power Labs' biomass Power Pallet, currently in use in more than 50 countries, "potentially the most important and transformative energy product that no one has heard of." Marin Clean Energy, All Power Labs and many other IPPs are eager to join the Bay Area power grid, but the local utility, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), is concerned that distributed energy generated by multiple unfamiliar producers might harm the grid's stability. The result, currently, is an apparent state of conflict between IPPs and PG&E. What's coming next, though – driven by the inexorable demands of history – is an inevitable collaboration. Guided by California's Public Utilities Commission, IPPs and PG&E will work together to design, build and operate a standards-based Power Cloud that encompasses a broad variety of distributed energy producers while protecting the integrity of the grid. The same discussion is underway on a global basis. Given the right technology and enlightened government oversight, what today look like zero-sum conflicts among specific interests will resolve into a shared solution – the Power Cloud – that will guarantee safe, reliable, clean plug-and-play energy for the next 100 years.

Stephen Deskevich is a nuclear engineer and serves as Vice President of Generation Industry Solutions at Ventyx, an ABB company.

(c) 2014 Breaking Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).

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