Utility executives predict rise of distributed generation and natural gas prices

As countries like Denmark, Germany, and Japan are proceeding full-steam ahead toward a renewable-dominated energy portfolio and completely away from large-scale nuclear energy, the large U.S. utility Southern Company has been approved to build two new nuclear power plants.  Thomas Fenning, who leads the company believes that nuclear generation is inevitable, supporting the idea that renewables are unable to provide for base load and natural gas supplies lowering along with increased demand from transport and exports. While his company has been able to reduce coal-fired generation and jump on the natural-gas bandwagon, he sees a problem in the horizon within 20 years.

However, there is an understanding that the so-called "democratization of energy" is a growing movement.  Communities are increasingly coming together to generate power closer to where it is consumed (distributed generation): from individual rooftops, to energy harvesting at gyms, to small-scale community power plants using a variety of sources like solar, wind, heat-recovery, methane/natural gas fuel-cells.  One headline case in the States has been the city of Boulder, Colorado, which has been seeking to "fire" its power generation, transmission, and distribution provider Xcel Energy for allegedly not being aggressive enough with its green energy initiatives.

"David Crane has lived the massive power outage in New Jersey that followed in Sandy’s wake. He was without power for days as were thousands of his fellow New Jersey residents. And that has given him some fresh insights," reported EnergyBiz from Edison Electric Institutes post-election executive forum in Phoenix in November.

'Our industry is based on wooden poles. Do you know how insane that is in the 21^st century?'

As storms intensify and oceans rise, the benefits of owning your own distributed generation will become compelling, said Crane, NRG president and chief executive.

[In fact, during breaks several conference attendees from the Northeast talked about the generators that they have purchased for their homes – and how to maintain them when they were fired up for many consecutive days.]"