My compliments to Jonathan Thompson for his article “One grid to rule them all” in the July 21 Region section.
He did a good job covering many of the challenges the utility grid faces right now, and some of the inefficiencies brought about by the complexity of today’s distributed energy resources, which are “dispatched” (controlled ) by Mother Nature, not the utility company.
To further complicate matters, we are dealing with contracts that are 10-20 years old, which no doubt will change immensely when they are renewed, but I don’t think that long ago anyone in this industry could fully understand how rapid and complex the change would be. And we’re dealing with some antiquated systems here; the original design of which are 50-100 years old, when nobody imaged that someday power could flow both ways across the grid.
Thanks to all of you on a well done article; better (less biased and more factual) than most I’ve seen on the topic in a newspaper.
Clint Rapier
Cortez