information on Microgrids:

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This is a very "hot" topic, even here in the Midwest. There's a lot of interest, especially in light of the price increases that we will be seeing with natural gas fired units. There's going to be sticker shock this winter, if current gas price trends are any indicator.

An interesting side note is how the issue of microgrids is starting to play out in some local communities. There's several issues being raised, and it's interesting to see how the different parties are lining up. For example:

1) Both the major local utility (initially), and several environmentalist groups are not in favor of the microgrids. The local major utility is coming around, but not the environmentalists. The utility was looking at this as loss of business, but then started to look at all the aspects (bad press from service disruption, less pressure on having to build expensive new capacity, etc.), and they are much more open to the microgrid concept. Now, still got to make it work, but they are at least ready to make the attempt.

The environmentalists, not so much. Their big issue is global warming, and they feel that these smaller microgrid based "operating areas" will not only increase the potential for global warming, but will be much harder to deal with, because not only would there be more of them (vrs. several large power producers), but the microgrids will all be local based, and trying to regulate local microgrids for global warming is going to be a terribly difficult "sell" to the politicans. It's one thing to go after big corporate interests, it's a whole different situation to go after units of local governments, i.e. Taxpayers/Voters. Remember,as the late Tip O'Neal used to say, "All Politics is Local".

2) The funding issue. Now, this is actually coming around. Many states now provide for local units of government, such as municipalities and Counties to create what are called "Special Service" taxing districts, where tax exempt bonds can be issued for capital development within a specified area, which can easily apply to a microgrid service area.

3) It's still a few years out, but if we get a really good 2-3 day electric power service "interruption", things will boil over really fast. People used to 24/7 availability of unlimited electric power get really, really cranky when they got to deal with several days of no juice. Particularly if it's really hot (no A/C) or really cold (remember, most 90+ gas furnaces have electronic control units with micro circuit boards). That's when you will see things jump into high gear.