Extracted from the Energy Gang Digest, Jigar Shah, Stephen Lacey and Richard Caperton discuss the ongoing ephemeralization of the utilities sectors. The hosts suggest it may follow a similar pattern to the ongoing abandonment of landlines in favour of mobile networks.
From the shownotes to the episode:
Utilities may soon be on the verge of a “death spiral” as more customers leave the grid and implement distributed energy technologies like solar. A similar shift happened in telecom as the rise of mobile phones made copper lines nearly obsolete.
This week, we’ll ask what lessons the utility sector can learn from telecom companies that have already navigated the shift to distributed technologies. (And for another take on the issue, read Scott Clavenna’s piece on the utility-telecom connection.)
We’ll also discuss why some in the Tea Party and other unlikely groups are supporting renewables, as well as ask what we’ve learned about grid management ten years after the notorious 2003 blackout in the Northeast U.S.