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Electric Cooperatives

Q&A: How Rural Co-Ops Can Help Lead The Smart Grid Transition

May 4, 2017 David J. Unger, www.midwestenergynews.com
By David J. Unger for Midwest Energy News - Rural electric cooperatives spread across the U.S. in the 1930s to electrify parts of the country where as many as nine out of ten rural homes lacked electricity. Today, many of those co-ops are building on that legacy by deploying an advanced, 21st-century version of the electricity distribution systems they brought to farms decades ago. In some cases, rural America is seeing the smart grid arrive at their doorstep well before their urban and suburban counterparts. As the newly elected, two-year-term president of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), Phil Carson has a bird’s-eye view of grid modernization efforts underway in rural America. Carson also sits on the board of directors at Tri-County Electric Cooperative in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, giving him an up-close-and-personal look at the challenges and opportunities facing rural power providers in the age of the smart grid. Unlike traditional utilities, co-ops are not-for-profit entities owned by the customers they serve. It is that business structure, Carson says, that makes co-ops uniquely responsive to consumer demands for technological solutions to traditional grid problems.

How To Socialize America’s Energy

May 22, 2016 Kate Aronoff, www.theleapblog.org , , , ,
By Kate Aronoff for the LEAP Blog. Today’s renewable energy sector, while growing rapidly, hardly offers a roadmap to the transition needed. As billionaires battle over the profits promised by the “clean energy revolution,” experts agree that cobbling together private-sector solutions will not be enough. Neither will the boutique solutions on offer from the left. A more radical approach—one commensurate to the scale of the problem—will require state intervention. Yet traditional forms of public investment remain elusive. Calls for a Green New Deal or wartime-level mobilization against climate change, to use the oft-invoked metaphors (A “Marshall Plan for the Earth,” in Naomi Klein’s version), each take their cues from an economic ideology antithetical to today’s. Instead of direct investment, funding for renewables comes largely via tax credits and market-based incentives for private companies, including the recently extended 30 percent Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for solar. Public infrastructure spending and job creation programs remain off the table.

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