Surging growth in distributed energy production, driven by innovations in solar and battery technologies,  is helping the energy sector to cope with climate change, said Tim Hade, COO and co-founder of Scale Microgrid Solutions.

“We’re getting to the point right now where distributed energy is starting to displace coal and gas - that’s going to be sort of a choppy road over the next decade or two,” Hade said.

“Our current energy infrastructure has way too many single points of failure. We need to figure out a way to make it more reliable and more resilient in the face of ever-changing climate catastrophes,” Hade said.

“On-site solar generation and batteries can provide 80% of the facility’s power need today. And then figuring out the other 20% is where we spend a lot of engineering R&D time, trying to figure out how to get a zero or low-carbon solution.”

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Innovations unleashing distributed energy productionChallenges of hydrogen distributionThe continuing surge in distributed energy production in the U.S.Fast-evolving battery technologies“When you look at the ramp rate when it comes to battery technology, we’re accomplishing a lot of things in months that people thought would take decades,” Hade said.

“We’re experimenting with all sorts of cool technologies in that space, different battery chemistries, and longer-duration storage, as well as alternative sustainable fuels like green hydrogen, is an example."

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