Another Way of Looking At It...

[ajohnmeyer]

Originally Posted by cfg83

MorningGaser -just start electrifying people's roofs
CarloSW2

I think you've just hit it.
What I think that we need more than anything is a massive "New Deal" scale program to decentralize and green the nations power grid. As the large-scale blackouts, brownouts and rolling blackouts of the nations grids in the last few years have shown, centralized power generation has it's downsides. One key plant or transformer station goes out under a peak load, there is the potential to take down the entire grid.

I seem to recall a program under President Clinton that aimed to put solar panels on the roofs of a million homes. Of course, that program got the axe under the current administration. Go figure. The Initial investment cost would be large, but the long-term payoff could be enormous. Just think, the peak power production occurs simultaneously with peak power demand. Fill in the "gaps" in production with a huge wind power program on the coasts and in the great plains, and you have a significantly reduced (even periodically eliminated) load on our current fossil-fueled power plants.