Micropower; smaller, cleaner and cheaper

 Yann Arthus Bertrand

Micropower, also known as distributed generation (DG), is a growing sector of the energy market that holds great promises for locally decentralized generation. This clean technology creates power with fuel cells, solar panels, microturbines, generating electricity from many small energy sources and help avoiding economical, logistical, safety, health, and environmental problems of large power plant. Additionally, a centralized power source can substantially reduces the economic and environmental cost of electrical services and lead to a new economical system based on improving human health against global warming.

In addition, our increasingly digital dependence, decreasing quality of infrastructures and the intensification of storms make us vulnerable to disruptions of power, a more distributed and decentralized network of small systems can reduce the problem. Furthermore, micropower systems can make a huge difference in the developing world, where “power poverty” is an important economical and political unsustainable problem, nearly one third of humanity, have been left utterly powerless by the centralized model. In developing countries micropower has the potential to allow people to develop “stand-alone village systems” with no more need for expensive grid extension.

Micropower is challenging the “bigger-is-cheaper” concept and is an available and accessible solution to global warming and the global economical crisis. The promising sector of small new electric clean source companies in both the developed and developing world, venture capital and microcredit models are being used to finance micropower, helping [startup] companies "survive their revenue-losing early years and enabling potential customers to surmount the high first cost of the new technologies”.

A radical societal shifts can occur when the large scale electricity model struggle to find economic and ecological solution. Historians remind us that technical systems are formed at the intersection of technologies and values.

The video shows an independent solar house with the option to sell the exceed energy back to the company…

References:
Worldwatch Institute. Micropower: The Next Electrical Era. Seth Dunn, July 2000. From http://www.worldwatch.org/system/files/EWP151.pdf
Micropower Council. Promoting the small-scale generation of sustainable energy.  http://www.micropower.co.uk/welcome.html