If renewable energy
is finally ready for primetime, as many scientists believe, why
are we still so dependent on natural gas? According to research
at the College of Engineering's Renewable and Appropriate Energy
Laboratory (RAEL), the key to finally sparking the renewable energy
revolution is transforming every household into a small-scale power
plant.
"Anyone should be allowed to be a buyer and seller of power," says RAEL director Daniel M. Kammen, an associate professor in the Energy and Resources Group (ERG) and Department of Nuclear Engineering. "That would encourage people to put solar panels on the roof and fuel cells in the basement. The traditional utilities would be the middlemen."
Under current policy, utility customers can zero their monthly bill by generating their own electricity but are not compensated for any extra power they feed into the grid. One commonly held fear that Kammen's group is helping assuage with their research is that dramatic variations in the power coursing through the grid could crash the system. According to the RAEL studies, the power grid could support a variance of at least 20 percent.
"The grid is much more robust than people think," Kammen says. "It could easily handle every house becoming both a sink and a source of energy."
To do this, Kammen explains, utility substations will most likely have to upgrade their systems to integrate reserve capacities and real-time monitoring of consumer supply and demand via smart metering.
In addition to studying how renewable energy can better be "sold" to the public and private sectors in the US, RAEL is developing more efficient energy systems - from photovoltaic to biomass - for rural communities in Zimbabwe, Thailand, and Kenya. Meanwhile, other recent technical and economic research at the lab analyzed the increased efficiency of compact flourescent lightbulbs and the impact of a U.S. government program that supported companies seeking to audit their power consumption.
"Overall, what we do is right between engineering and public policy," Kammen says. "If you want to see in fifteen years what deregulation is supposed to bring us - namely, a more diversified energy market with both small and large companies generating power from gas as well as wind, fuel cells, and other means - you've got to understand both the technology of energy and the whole outreach, dissemination, diffusion, and marketing side of things."
Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory: socrates.berkeley.edu/~rael
Energy and Resources Group: socrates.berkeley.edu/~erg
