Almost all of the current discussion on energy is focused on patching our wheezing, tired global system as it stumbles from disaster to disaster. Almost none of it is focused on energy independence at the community level, the place where nearly all of the real innovation and economic vigor will occur in the coming century. Here's a bit of an antidote to that, with more to come later.
Energy independence at the local level is in large part achieved by eliminating reliance on any single energy source, whether that is oil, gas, natural gas, biofuels, wood, solar, or wind. In other words, resilient communities need to be able to input all available energy sources and convert them into a standardized format. Further, that format must be usable in a plethora of different ways.
A good way to visualize how this works is as a Bow-Tie control system (aka a platform). The Bow-Tie is a form of universal control system architecture that underlies complex systems from the Internet to cell metabolism (for background, read the excellent article, "Bow ties, metabolism, and disease" by Caltech's Marie Csete and John Doyle). Applying the bow-tie concept to a resilient community's energy system, we get the following:
- Left side of the bow-tie: All energy inputs.
- The bow: a standardized energy format.
- Right side of the bow-tie: All sorts of end use scenarios
Clearly, the standardized format that best fits the need described by the bow-tie is electricity. Nearly all energy sources can be converted into it, it is network portable (particularly in combination with a smart microgrid), and there is a plethora of diverse systems that can consume it.
So, if electricity is the metabolic building block of a resilient community's energy platform, what is its energy storage medium? The simple answer is: HEAT. More on that later.