NEWS Welcome to the Decentralized Energy Revolution: Cleanly Electrifying the World

electricity

 

CALIFORNIA MAGAZINE, APRIL 7, 2015

http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-in/2015–04-07/welcome-decentralized-energy-revolution-cleanly-electrifying

   By Glen Martin

While the boons of elec­tric­i­ty are obvi­ous to any­one who has watched a 49ers game on a 70-inch ultra HDTV or whipped up a frozen mar­gari­ta in a blender, it also has its downsides—most of them envi­ron­men­tal. Coal and nat­ur­al gas pow­er plants belch plan­et-warm­ing CO2 into the atmos­phere, while nuclear plants pro­duce high­ly lethal radwaste.

Still, access to elec­tri­cal pow­er is a basic social-equi­ty issue. About 1.5 bil­lion of the planet’s 7 bil­lion peo­ple lack elec­tric­i­ty, and their lives are impov­er­ished, phys­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly, as a result. Fur­ther, a defi­cien­cy of elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­ates envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems of its own. If peo­ple lack elec­tric­i­ty to cook their food or warm their homes, they’ll sub­sti­tute wood or char­coal, result­ing in defor­esta­tion and yes, more car­bon spew­ing into the atmosphere.

But a paper by UC Berke­ley researchers Peter Alstone, Dim­it­ry Ger­shen­son and Daniel Kam­men indi­cates that a major change in the way pow­er is pro­duced and con­sumed is in the offing—one that could elec­tri­fy the devel­op­ing world (lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly) while promis­ing reduced car­bon emissions.

The study, pub­lished in the jour­nal Nature Cli­mate Change, iden­ti­fies the present moment as a tip­ping point, one in which decen­tral­ized trans­mis­sion net­works, cheap pho­to­voltaics, sophis­ti­cat­ed low-ener­gy appli­ances, mobile phones and “vir­tu­al” finan­cial ser­vices are all merg­ing to cre­ate a kind of alt-grid that will, as one addict­ed to clichés might say, shift the ener­gy paradigm.

Here’s what’s hap­pen­ing: Solar pan­els and bat­ter­ies have got­ten both bet­ter and cheap­er, to the point that the devel­op­ing world’s mini-grids (for com­mu­ni­ties) and micro-grids (vil­lages or indi­vid­ual homes) can afford them. Such sys­tems are eas­i­er and cheap­er to set up than lega­cy sys­tems depen­dent on big, cen­tral­ized pow­er plants and tow­er-sup­port­ed trans­mis­sion lines fes­tooned around the coun­try­side. Ultra-effi­cient appliances—everything from TVs to refrigerators—also are now wide­ly avail­able, as is LED light­ing (which uses min­i­mal power).

What’s mak­ing this new sys­tem pos­si­ble is the merg­ing of infor­ma­tion and ener­gy tech­nolo­gies, of aggres­sive inno­va­tion in both the pow­er pro­duc­tion and smart phone worlds,” says Kam­men, a pro­fes­sor at the Gold­man School of Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and the direc­tor of UC’s Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Ener­gy Laboratory.

Kenya was once an en­ergy black hole. Today Mas­aai mor­an (war­ri­ors) herd their live­stock while sim­ul­tan­eously check­ing cat­tle prices in Mom­basa on their cell phones, which they hol­ster in bead­ed pouch­es worn around their necks.

The abrupt and mas­sive spread of cell phone tech­nol­o­gy has encour­aged vir­tu­al bank­ing sys­tems that allow small-scale ener­gy pro­duc­ers and their cus­tomers to do busi­ness from any­where, and on a pro-rata basis. Cus­tomers are able to buy pow­er in exceed­ing­ly small increments—say, enough to recharge their cell phones and pow­er an LED light or two, or a tiny refrig­er­a­tor and a high-effi­cien­cy hot plate. That’s a big deal in the devel­op­ing world, where even a few such ameni­ties make a gigan­tic dif­fer­ence in the qual­i­ty of life—and where cash always is in short sup­ply. It allows cus­tomers in rur­al Africa and Asia to anal­o­gous­ly do with ener­gy what they do when they vis­it a vil­lage store: buy a sin­gle stick of gum or a matchbook.

Indeed, Kam­men says, trust­ed e‑banking sys­tems are essen­tial for the sup­port of the mini-grid net­work, and he notes that the devel­op­ing world has led in cre­at­ing apps for such services.

He cites Kenya as an espe­cial­ly shin­ing exam­ple. Fif­teen years ago, the coun­try was a com­mu­ni­ca­tions black hole. Hard-line tele­pho­ny was the rule, and spot­ty at best. Out­side Nairo­bi and Mom­basa, peo­ple made do with CB radios or word of mouth. Then mobile tech­nol­o­gy arrived, and with­in a few years every­one was con­nect­ed. Today, when vis­it­ing the country’s wildlife reserves, you’ll see Masaai moran (war­riors) herd­ing their live­stock while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly check­ing cat­tle prices in Mom­basa on their cell phones, which they hol­ster in bead­ed pouch­es worn around their necks.

In the 1990s I helped start up Mpala Research Cen­ter in Laikip­ia [in north­ern Kenya],” recalls Kam­men. “We had to wait for a satel­lite to pass over­head so we could make our 35-sec­ond phone calls. Now researchers are receiv­ing stream­ing data on indi­vid­ual lions and African wild dogs that they’re tracking.”

In 2007, a pro­pri­etary mobile sys­tem known as M‑Pesa was launched in Kenya. Orig­i­nal­ly pro­mot­ed as an easy way to post pay­ments for microloans, it was soon used by work­ing urban­ites as a means of send­ing mon­ey to rel­a­tives back on the rur­al sham­ba. M‑Pesa is now Kenya’s pre­em­i­nent bank­ing sys­tem. As of late 2013, 19 mil­lion of the country’s 44 mil­lion peo­ple were signed up, with 25 per­cent of the nation­al econ­o­my flow­ing through M‑Pesa’s vir­tu­al con­duits. In terms of ener­gy devel­op­ment, that means small-scale pow­er providers can receive pay­ment for spe­cif­ic ser­vices from cus­tomers seam­less­ly, bypass­ing every­thing from poor infra­struc­ture (peo­ple don’t have to walk miles over cat­tle trails to pay their bills) to gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate corruption.

And we’re see­ing oth­er IT appli­ca­tions all around the devel­op­ing world,” Kam­men says. “In Bangladesh, for exam­ple, phones are being used to test bat­tery [arrays]. Keep­ing bat­tery sys­tems ful­ly func­tion­al is crit­i­cal for mini-grids, and it’s a big prob­lem in Bangladesh, where a third of the coun­try floods each year. Mini-grids don’t have main­te­nance teams reg­u­lar­ly check­ing the sys­tems, but you can upload data on cell phones when there’s a spe­cif­ic prob­lem, and the provider can deal with it.”

We’re mov­ing from an era that has re­mained un­der-in­nov­at­ed for dec­ades—the sys­tem where you pay a big util­ity for your en­ergy—to de­cent­ral­ized sys­tems…. It’s es­sen­tially the demo­crat­iz­a­tion of energy.”

Decen­tral­ized elec­tri­fi­ca­tion also reduces the caus­es of defor­esta­tion. When peo­ple have elec­tric­i­ty, the rate of char­coal and wood burn­ing typ­i­cal­ly decreas­es dra­mat­i­cal­ly, Kam­men observes.

And decen­tral­ized ener­gy isn’t just an accel­er­at­ing trend in the devel­op­ing world. In Amer­i­ca, solar pan­els are sprout­ing on sub­ur­ban homes like chanterelle mush­rooms in Men­do­ci­no after a win­ter rain; cell phones are ubiq­ui­tous. The Unit­ed States, in short, is expe­ri­enc­ing its own decen­tral­ized ener­gy revolution.

I have solar pan­els on my roof, and I can use my phone to track how much pow­er each one is pro­duc­ing,” Kam­men says. “I can deter­mine which ones are dirty and may need a clean­ing to improve per­for­mance. I can see how green my ener­gy con­sump­tion is at any moment.”

That points to a shift in pow­er (polit­i­cal, not elec­tri­cal) from the ener­gy pro­duc­er to the con­sumer. In fact, Kam­men con­tends that the “Big Grid” of the exist­ing util­i­ties must adapt, meld­ing with the grow­ing mini- and micro-grids, to thrive.

We’re mov­ing from an era that has remained under-inno­vat­ed for decades—the sys­tem where you pay a big util­i­ty for your energy—to decen­tral­ized sys­tems that have a lot of net­worked com­po­nents and con­sumer input, all dri­ven by pow­er­ful IT,” Kam­men says. “It’s essen­tial­ly the democ­ra­ti­za­tion of energy.”

But to real­ly accel­er­ate the trend, Kam­men says, a big dog must emerge from the pack of alt-ener­gy advocates.

We’re work­ing with a num­ber of start-ups that are wrestling with the best way to put this all togeth­er,” Kam­men says. “Nobody has hit on the right approach yet, but I antic­i­pate some­body will do a Face­book kind of break­out soon­er or lat­er, come up with an off-grid ver­sion of Tes­la. Our paper has been get­ting a lot of response in the week since its pub­li­ca­tion, in part because it demon­strates just how neg­a­tive the impacts of poor ener­gy access are. We show how it stymies edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties and exac­er­bates gen­der inequal­i­ty. It accel­er­ates defor­esta­tion and can increase car­bon emis­sions. But we also iden­ti­fy a goal: pro­vid­ing elec­tric­i­ty to the 1.5 bil­lion peo­ple who don’t have it by 2030. And with the sys­tems we dis­cuss, we think that’s achievable.”

 

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