David Crane's Manifesto

Have you read NRG CEO David Crane's manifesto of consumer empowerment in the electricity sector?

You should.

Crane envisions a sustainable future where energy consumers become energy producers.  His "manifesto" provides the road map for how he intends to get there.  Here's one of his ambitious thoughts:

Just a few years ago, the prevailing wisdom was that the path to a clean energy economy depended on our collective willingness to build a nationwide high-voltage transmission system in order to transport electricity in vast quantities from the relentlessly windy and brutally sunny parts of the country, where people generally don't live, to the more temperate places where Americans tend to congregate.

The folly of that idea thankfully was realized before anyone actually began to build such an expensive and pointless white elephant. Now we are headed for the same goal, but in the opposite direction: down the path toward a distributed-generation-centric clean energy future featuring individual choice and the empowerment of the American energy consumer.

While I fully share his enthusiasm, a whole bunch of transmission developers don't seem to have gotten Crane's memo on this.  They persist in attempts to cover the Midwest with wind turbines and transmission lines. 

But, the biggest monsters always do seem to go out with a final, terrible roar.  Hang on, transmission opponents, the monster is weakening and the future is coming!

We expect to be soon to market with a robust platform offering rooftop solar to homes and businesses and other forms of sustainable and clean generation that will offer our customers the ability to dramatically reduce their dependence on system power from the centralized grid.

I bet Michael Skelly wishes he'd thought of this back in 2009...