It's Time For DG to Become an Integral Part of the Nation's Power Planning Solution

Durham, N.C., August 18, 2003. A new white paper calls for revision of current transmission planning to include customer onsite generation.

"The country has a unique opportunity to transform the electric planning process into a system that is more efficient, less costly, more reliable and more secure," says Dr. Jerry Jackson. "Electric generation technology advances over the last twenty years have reduced generator size to a level appropriate for a variety of medium and large commercial and industrial customers and apartment buildings. Integrating customer generation, or DG, in generation and transmission planning, will provide a more decentralized system, reducing costs and increasing reliability."

"Transforming the current electric system to include DG is similar to the computer industry transformation that occurred with the introduction of PC's and local computer networks. An insurance company, for instance, may have had one computer center with a remote terminal at each branch office. When the mainframe went down, the entire network died. Today's distributed computing systems have two-way information flows with much of the processing and data storage occurring at individual remote sites increasing reliability of the entire system and preventing entire system failures. DG has the potential to provide the same kind of benefits that remote computing has had in the computer industry."

The white paper, which is available at http://www.maisy.com/wpdgbo.htm , discusses issues and provides answers related to integrating DG in the nation's power planning solution.

Dr. Jerry Jackson is an international energy expert with over twenty-five years experience addressing energy technology and energy policy issues. He was invited to give the keynote address on DG at an international conference in Christchurch, New Zealand in June, 2003. He consults with electric and gas utilities, energy service providers, equipment manufacturers, research institutions, state energy offices and the Department of Energy. He has been president of Jackson Associates since 1982. Prior to that he was head of the Applied Research Division at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. He can be reached at jjackson@maisy.com or 919-967-9000.