“The cheapest, most reliable power can be produced renewably and produced at/or near the customers — that is ‘distributed.'”
— Amory Lovins (Rocky Mountain Institute), “Freeing Energy” Podcast
“When energy is produced and consumed closer to its source, less stress is placed on the electricity grid, which promotes energy resilience during mass power outages, an increasingly common occurrence as our planet warms and storms intensify.”
— Center for Progressive Reform, “Power to the People: Advancing Energy Equity via Customer-Owned Electricity Generation”
“Distributed solar, especially when paired with battery storage or micro-grids, is vital to creating a resilient and reliable energy system… Distributed energy can provide essential power even when the centralized grid fails.”
— Center for Biological Diversity, “Rooftop-Solar Justice: Why Net Metering Is Good For People And The Planet And Why Monopoly Utilities Want To Kill It”
“The more that you could just supply local load with local resources that don’t use transmission, you’re not driving a need for more transmission or for more utility-scale generation built on desert habitats or farmland.”
— Lorenzo Kristov, Volts Podcast: “Envisioning a more democratic, bottom-up energy system”
“Distributed and dispatchable generation can replace the dirtiest and most costly sources of generation on the grid — the peaker plants. That makes the business case rather simple to make.”
— Allan Schurr, “The Case for Distributed & Dispatchable Capacity on Microgrids”
“The energy on your house, in your building, in your neighborhood is the cheapest, most reliable form of energy, but it’s trapped by a policy and business model invented for an entirely different world 100 years ago.”
— Bill Nussey, “Freeing Energy” Podcast
“Distributed solar also brings jobs and other economic benefits to the communities where the projects are built — significantly more jobs than utility-scale clean energy and fossil fuel projects.”
— Center for Biological Diversity, “Rooftop-Solar Justice: Why Net Metering Is Good For People And The Planet And Why Monopoly Utilities Want To Kill It”
“Rooftop solar projects produce power right where folks use it — eliminating delivery fees altogether. It’s the only option that provides generation, transmission, and distribution all in one package.”
— John Farrell (Institute for Local Self-Reliance), “The Free Delivery Farce in Solar”
“Duke NC should explore alternative resource expansion models that expand behind-the-meter battery storage instead of building additional fossil-gas fired units, saving ratepayers on their energy bills, and reducing Duke NC’s greenhouse gas emissions.”
— Applied Economics Clinic for Clean Energy Group, “Distributed Storage: The Missing Piece in North Carolina’s Decarbonization Efforts”
“Utilities use your money to perpetuate the farce that large-scale solar costs less than customer-owned solar because it protects their monopolies. It protects a near-guaranteed 10 percent (or higher!) rate of return on every dollar they spend. It protects them from competition from customers wanting a slice of the clean energy economy.”
— John Farrell (Institute for Local Self-Reliance), “The Free Delivery Farce in Solar”
“Behind-the-meter (BTM) installations can be a fast way to bring storage capacity online by avoiding interconnection delays; this could accelerate BTM battery deployment in the future if interconnection bottlenecks continue to present challenges.”
— The Brattle Group for GridLab, “California’s Virtual Power Potential: How Five Consumer Technologies Could Improve the State’s Energy Affordability”
“Large-scale deployment of VPPs [Virtual Power Plants] could help address demand increases and rising peaks at lower cost than conventional resources, reducing the energy costs for Americans – one in six of whom are already behind on electricity bills.”
— U.S. Department of Energy, “Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Virtual Power Plants”