Applying Smart Growth Lessons to the Grid

Celeste LeCompte
Monday, May 18, 2009
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Is smart grid development susceptible to urban sprawl?
Source: Flickr user Scorpions and Centaurs

The path toward the U.S. smart grid — or "grid modernization" in the language of the stimulus bill — has been compared over the last few months to the build-out of the modern transportation system in an earlier era. It's not a bad analogy. The power grid today is a lot like the transportation infrastructure we developed then. It's a system set up to accommodate mass production. But as the grid gets smarter, we'll need a electrical-transport system that's "right sized" for distributed generation. […]

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