Our power grids are failing. Distributed energy resources might be our way out.

Duncan S. Campbell, VP at Scale Microgrid Solutions and cofounder of DER Task Force

“More and more, we’re going to try to skip the distribution and put the supply next to the demand, so we can avoid distribution costs.“

I grew up in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, which became prosperous through mining anthracite coal. It was a huge part of the area’s economy and culture, and when it left in the 1960s — much earlier than in states like West Virginia — the economy left too. For decades, politicians promised to bring back coal, and obviously that never happened. That got me interested in all the new things happening at the intersection of energy, climate, and technology.

I lead our project analysis team at Scale Microgrid Solutions, which helps develop onsite DER solutions for commercial and industrial customers. There are a million options and it’s different at every site. But the end goal is to reduce costs while providing reliable power.

Solar and batteries are making the cost of generating power cheaper, while the cost of distributing it is not getting cheaper. More and more, we’re going to try to skip the distribution and put the supply next to the demand, so we can avoid distribution costs. Historically, that idea has been crazy, because there wasn’t any technology that did that well. You could put a mini coal power plant in your backyard, but that would be enormously expensive, and nobody would want it.

That’s not to say that we’re all going to go off grid. The grid is really valuable. But we’re going from a place of no energy being distributed, to more and more of it going that way. Who knows, maybe we get to half and half, or something like that, while saving the U.S. around half a trillion dollars. It’s a big, interesting, crazy future.

‍