Why the Microgrid Could Be the Answer to Our Energy Crisis | Page 3 | Fast Company

Why the Microgrid Could Be the Answer to Our Energy Crisis | Page 3 | Fast Company: "Amory Lovins, the green wise man of the Rocky Mountain Institute, is among the biggest and most influential fans of micropower; he's written a book, Small Is Profitable, laying out 207 reasons why. Among them: 'Distributed generation' means a redundant, resilient, secure infrastructure -- that's why military bases and hospitals have their own power plants. Micropower can be more reliable, given that 98% of all blackouts originate in the grid. And it creates thousands of local jobs near population centers in design, installation, and maintenance. 'Micropower, as of three years ago -- the latest global data -- was a third of the world's new electricity and one-sixth of the world's total,' he tells Fast Company in his trademark pressure-wash style. 'Micropower growth is very rapid, and it's [currently] almost wholly financed by private capital. Distributed renewables in 2007 got $91 billion of new private investment... . There are several quite distinct reasons for thinking that these stats I've just given you are the leading edge of a tsunami of change in the power sector.' Small Is Profitable concludes that because the scale lowers capital risk, the economic benefits of a dollar invested in distributed renewables can be an order of magnitude (factor of 10) greater than the same dolla"