Major Evolution of the Utility Paradigm

John, in a U.S. Senate hearing addressing grid reliability on Thursday, environmental activist Michael Shellenberger provided powerful testimony arguing against distributed generation and "microgrids":

"Congress took questions relating to the security of America’s electricity supply seriously before more than a dozen states experienced energy shortages last month, but those events make this hearing all the more urgent. In 2012, 2017, and 2021 the National Academies of Science and Engineering published three separate reports on threats to the grid, resilience, and the future of electricity. In its 2017 report, the Academies warned that U.S. electrical grids were increasingly “complex and vulnerable.”

Over the last 25 years, increasingly decentralized electricity generation in restructured electricity markets, along with growth in the number of regulatory institutions, has resulted in “divergent interests of federal, state, regional and local authorities,” wrote the Academies in the 2021 report. Electricity experts are not able to clearly answer the question, “who is in charge of planning, developing and ensuring the integrity of the future power system?” The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and-the North American Electric Reliability Corporation are tasked to ensure electrical grid reliability and resilience. However, the Academies noted, 'they too face short-term pressures and fiscal constraints.'"

Shellenberger contends distributed generation is more expensive, less efficient (and thus more emissions-intensive), and more vulnerable to hacking:

"More decentralized electrical generation makes the grid more vulnerable. 'We’re adding a lot of stuff at the grid edge,' said the lead author of the Academies’ 2012, 2017, and 2021 reports, 'and if I start building microgrids does that increase my potential vulnerability? The answer is, "Yes, of course. The more complicated I make it, the more attack surfaces and, hence, the more possibilities of failure."'"

In comments at the hearing, Shellenberger said "I think we'd all agree  the reliability problems introduced by a cold snap in Texas were worsened by a complex and unwieldy system, guided by competing interests. Interesting, that other guests today believe a solution lies in making such systems more complex."

The generating resources need to be reliable, reasonably dispersed, and not controlled by the investment class. In other words, managed by municipal power companies or regulated utilities. Gee, pretty much what served us well for decades before the political left decided they could make things better.

Micro generators are fundamentally thermodynamically inefficient, expensive and not particularly reliable. Appears to me to be nothing more than yet another con-artist scheme created by the investment class and willingly aided-and-abetted by politicians whose campaigns are hugely bankrolled by the less-than-honest.