Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

216National Energy Securityerature of appropriate technology, alternative development concepts, and “postindustrial”patterns of settlement, production, and politics, the term “decentralized”has been used to mean everything from “small” to “agrarian/utopian” to“individually controlled.” Discussion here, however, is confined to the energy system(not to industrial, urban, or governmental patterns). And even in this narrowcontext, eight dimensions of “decentralization” must be distinguished.•Unit scale. If “unit” means a device which converts and supplies energy,each unit supplies energy in some form at a rate of so may watts in a particulartime pattern, depending on specified parameters. “Scale” in this sensemeans the size or output capacity of a single unit of supply.• Dispersion. This refers to whether individual units are clustered or scattered,concentrated or distributed, relative to each other. This property—densityin space—does not specify how big each unit is, nor whether or how the unitsmay be interconnected.• Interconnectedness. Separate units can be coupled to each other, standalone(connected only to the end-user), or both optionally so as to isolate failuresand permit autonomy when needed. Interconnection may increase reliability,and it certainly allows a given amount of supply capacity to meet asomewhat larger amount of scattered demand because not all demands occurat once. Interconnectedness says nothing about unit scale, dispersion, or distancefrom the user. It may refer to electricity or to other forms of energy (e.g.,solar collectors connected by a district-heating grid). It may be simple or complexboth in technology and in the intricacy of its pattern.• Composition (or, as computer designers sometimes call it, “texture”).Different units can be monolithic (consisting of inseparable parts) or modular(combining multiple subunits). A gas turbine power plant, windfarm, or photovoltaicarray is generally modular; a central thermal plant is more monolithic.Proposed “nuclear parks” would be modular but their modules wouldbe individually enormous: composition does not specify unit scale.Locality is a concept near the heart of what is often meant by “decentralization,”but it is here defined by this different term to avoid ambiguity. Locality is nota technical property of a unit in isolation, but rather expresses its users’ perceptionof its physical and social relationship to them. A remote unit serves its users via adistribution system which makes the users feel far removed, geographically orpolitically or both, from that unit. A local unit is nearer to its users, linked tothem by short supply lines.This distinction is more subtle than it may at first appear. For example, alarge hydroelectric dam serving several large smelters nearby may seem localto their operators; local can be big if the use is correspondingly big. Equally,a collection of small units can be remote. For example, a windfarm with many