Smaller, more dispersed generating units tend to make the transmission grid more robust.  In the USA, the trend for decades has been to ever larger generating plants, strategically or sometimes not so strategically located, connected to the grid by ever longer higher voltage transmission lines.  The strategic implications are obvious.  The addition of many small wind and/or solar units dispersed across the grid would tend to make it less vulnerable.


We all bleed the same color.

I fully agree.

See this table that I posted in an earlier diary (the one on energy policy, I think) about jobs per kWh produced:

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

I agree, distributed energy production would help the economy (jobs) and national security (both energy independence and a more robust grid). The environmental aspects are also touted widely.

One environmental benefit that is not often mentioned is that it will potentially help farmers and ranchers keep their land. They receive lease payments for the sighting of wind turbines, and the wind turbines keep the wealthy from moving in and buying "ranchettes". Most of the complaining you hear about the "unsightly" turbines comes from those who have moved out to the country and displaced farmers in order to have a "rural experience".

thanks nikita for a great diary.

i think this is the way forward for all the excellent reasons you mention.

i think also a great way to frame this knowledge/movement is to help folks understand how much more spending capital they will have once we are all weaned onto renewables.

thousands more eurodollars a year for each family to reinvest in bettering their surroundings, instead of watching them disappear into a corrupt black hole, over which they have little democratic say or control.

i too share jerome's urgency about this. in fact i'm surprised there aren't more prophets like isiah of old shaking their e-staffs and telling us to repent.

the streets should be full of them, but a veil of ignorance hangs gossamer over our collective eyes; we have been slowly massaged and seduced into accepting entitlement to a petro-economy as an eternal, natural phenomenon.

we should have continued what little started in the seventies, heck, L.A. was covered with solar water heaters back in the 20's!

so little, so late....

i've been installing a solar wellpump today!

there's a beautiful high in shifting energy allegiance. you become conscious of the weather in a whole new way.

and the frame of an energy problem!?!?!?

it's pouring down from above, always has been and always will.

save the black goop for lube.

the other huge change corollary to shifting energy allegiance will be in the field of public health.

the savings on our hardworking services will be immense as the air becomes cleaner; likewise with the water and the food.

extra capital to enjoy, less sorrow and pain as family members contract pollution-related sicknesses, what's not to love?

why aren't pols riding this wave all the way to the top?

answer: corruption at high state levels- (who, where?), and the relative lack of constructive imagination in the media.

grassroots, web-enabled demand for change will probably be how it shifts, coupled with price at the pump pressure.
excellent offering, thanks again!

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty