Reality Check
The Future of Electricity
More than a century after Nikola Tesla harnessed alternating current, power generation hasn't yet found an optimal technology. Oil reserves continue to be vulnerable to political shifts, while the burning of coal incurs the wrath of environmentalists. Luckily, researchers are making headway with methods to generate power from renewable, clean, and efficient sources. Some schemes, such as nuclear power, have never won popular favor in the US. But other systems, like solar (Reality Check, Wired 3.05, page 74) and wind generators, may finally be cost-effective. Wide deployment is the next step. Wired asked five experts to tap into the future of electricity.
| 10 Percent of US Power Is Wind-Generated | Micropower Plants Common in the US | Superconductors Used in Power Lines | Real-Time Pricing of the Power Systems
| Flavin | 2020 | 2000 | 2020 | 2005
| Lovins | 2008 | 1999 | unlikely | 2010
| Simon | 2050 | 2010 | 2050 | 2005
| Weinberg | 2025 | 2015 | unlikely | 2010
| Bottom Line | 2026 | 2006 | unlikely | 2008
Wind-generated power doesn't account for even 1 percent of US electricity, yet according to Weinberg, "the middle of the US, from the Dakotas to Texas, has sufficient wind resources to provide the US with three times its electrical demand of 1995." Lovins is confident that the use of wind power will skyrocket as soon as coal plants have to "pay the full costs of their carbon dioxide emissions." Even without that incentive, Flavin believes, over the next two decades, many of the aging coal and nuclear plants will be shut down and replaced with wind turbines. But, Simon explains, decorating the scenic Great Plains with wind turbines would not please the public. Besides, he says, compared with solar systems and micropower plants, "wind technology has the disadvantage of grid dependence."
Commonly thought of as plants that generate less than 1 megawatt of power to produce electricity for individual buildings, micropower plants are used in European hospitals, hotels, and other commercial facilities. According to Flavin, "unlike a central power plant, which is typically 35 percent efficient, micropower plants can capture waste heat for water and space heating, making them 80 to 90 percent efficient," therefore using nearly all of the energy in the fuel burned and leading to a distributed power system. But Weinberg doesn't think micropower plants will catch on in the US until utilities are restructured in a way that allows for "competition at the retail or customer level." Those more likely to rapidly employ this technology, Simon predicts, are "emerging nations where the grid is weak."
While superconductors that transfer energy with minimal loss may eventually be useful for building devices like tiny, cool-running computers, our experts think the demand for oft-hyped superconducting power lines will disappear just as the supply technology arrives. Weinberg believes that because gas turbines offer the cheapest electrical production, "all future fuels will be gas or gasified solids, which are more easily transported in pipelines" than through superconductor-enhanced power grids. Flavin and Lovins contend that the need for long-distance energy transmissions will be minimized. "Bulk power transmissions will be displaced by distributed utility – highly decentralized ways to make, store, and save electricity," Lovins says.
Your electric bill may be more accurate once the technology is in place to make it easier and cheaper to run your washing machine at night, for example. In fact, some large companies already enjoy real-time pricing of their electricity – meaning the price varies hour by hour, based on overall demand for the resources. But in addition to the obvious high expense of installing "smart" metering microchips in every home to receive rates transmitted from the utility company, there are other infrastructure issues that have to be addressed: "The grid is designed for unidirectional flow under hierarchical control," Lovins says, "not omnidirectional flow under distributed intelligence."
Christopher Flavin vice president for research; Worldwatch Institute, co-author of Power Surge: Guide to the Coming Energy Revolution (Norton, 1994)
Amory Lovins director of research, Rocky Mountain Institute
Gary Simon
senior director of electric power research at Cambridge Energy Research Associates
Carl Weinberg principal of Weinberg Associates; former manager of research and development for Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
