In the Part 1 of this series we were looking at some of the energy alternatives offered today. What conclusion we can make?
Is there any pure "clean" technology - the one which would not burn fossil fuels creating pollution and greenhouse effect, would not use toxic materials, would not require destructive mining to extract rare minerals and would not jeopardize valuable land and habitat? If you pay any attention to the recent debates about technology and energy in particular, you would be inclined to answer No. May be cold fusion or antimatter are the answer, but if we want to be realistic, we should be able to implement the solution on a global (or at least national) scale within a reasonable time frame and without exhausting all national resources.
What do we have to do then to satisfy our thirst for energy and not to kill ourselves and the planet? Can we do anything, is there any answer? I take a liberty to argue Yes, there is. And I am not asking you to turn off all the lights, stop manufacturing goods and go hunting and gathering.
The answer is Systems Architecture, specifically its principles of modularity and evolvability. Let's look again at my favorite example of aviation history. Did jumbo jets carrying 300-400 people appear first, or they were preceded by evolution of the technology? Note that any technology evolution - similar to its biological counterpart - is not straightforward. In the case of aviation, planes with piston engines and propellers were gradually becoming bigger, faster and more capable until they reached their ceiling of capability. By that time the new type of engine - jet - had been introduced into aviation. It became a disruptive innovation - first in military airplanes, initially in those requiring speed the most, fighters, then gradually in all others, until jet aircraft became dominant in aviation. Do you know however that before the airplanes era, lighter than air vehicles were flourishing and were promising to become the major means in military and civilian applications? Pictures of gigantic airships carrying thousands of passengers were on the pages of futuristic and scientific magazines. Did that promise materialize? It didn't! Not unlike their biological cousins - dinosaurs - they were wiped out and replaced by more advanced, heavier than air "species" - airplanes.
Clean energy should come through the similar path. Why do we need to build enormous wind turbines (or even fields of them), solar farms taking large areas or super-expensive geothermal plants (not even talking about nuclear plants, especially in the areas with known seismic activity)? We know all these technologies are still far from perfect! Economy of scale you say? This argument however makes sense only for the producer (or rater a seller) of the particular technology - be it wind turbines, PV modules or other. But what if we consider side effects mentioned above, add long time to construct and commission and then wait many years for payback? A recent study in Iceland shows that it may be more efficient to build several wellhead geothermal generators one at a time rather than one big geothermal field plant because they can be implemented sooner. One big plant requires long transmission lines with all associated cost and operation losses. For some new technologies (e.g. hydrogen fuel transport) extensive infrastructure has to be built to replace existing one. But what if the path chosen is a dead end like airships? What if, for example tomorrow's fuel cell technology would not require an extensive infrastructure while we will have already heavily invested in it? It is a missed opportunity and wasted resources...
I believe the focus should be on small-scale technologies but implemented incrementally. Being small means less expensive, therefore can be built with less capital and faster. Being small also means more flexible, i.e. fitting much wider range of applications. For example, a small solar thermal system with optimized configuration and adaptive real-time control can provide hot water and/or space heating not only for a big commercial building, but to a single-family residential house, for a temporary accommodation in a logging or exploration camp and even as a mobile platform for rapid deployment in military or disaster relief operations. Small unit (module ) can be easily repaired, replaced, moved or upgraded. Multiple modules can be connected in an array for increased capacity. Importantly, the technology can be improved, made more efficient, compact, less expensive etc. and expandable without dramatic disruption which would be the case for a large centralized system. This works similarly for small wind turbines, where we might find that vertical axis turbine provide better efficiency vs. traditional horizontal axis propeller due to its omnidirectional sensitivity, lower operating speed and less impact on birds. Micro-hydro can be implemented in many more places than a huge dam, without a need to flood big areas. And so on.
What is especially important, decentralized energy system - and I am speaking in general terms - makes it more resilient against fluctuations of the load in the "grid" of any kind, robust to the point of autonomy, in case of a technical failure, an environmental disaster or a terrorist act.
I see energy of the future not as one or few super hubs distributing energy at their own will, but rather as many smaller individual energy sources each controlled by its own smart control system, but all connected in the intelligent network sharing information between each other about their performance, consumption pattern and other important data such as weather, solar irradiance etc. leading to much better overall efficiency.
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