Announcement today in Japan, that due to the loss of nuclear reactors, they will have rolling blackouts this summer. Now to anyone who’s been to Tokyo, you know how much they love their neon lights! Not to mention the inconvenience to many, it will be a trying time for the residents of the city.
I remember in 2001 when we had the California blackouts and Quebec had its deep freeze, we all knew what it was like to live without power. I am not sure that distributed renewables would really impact such a situation, yet residential solar systems definitely would. The smart grid of the future is meant to be centered around shared, communal power which are a combination of distributed and non-distributed power generation.
The challenge for our governments is to place a value of the cost of distributed power in creating incentive programs that rewarded individuals or companies for their investments in home/commercial rooftop solar systems. Yet what is missing…storage. Now if only there could be a technology sufficiently convenient, affordable and dependable to act as storage without the need for lead-acid bulk as the most current technology features. Bolivian lithium the answer?
This solar blog writer sure hopes so…
Sass