From “For Energy Security, Bring a Gun to the Knife Fight,” published April 4, 2014 in the Daily Camera:
“Communities thinking for themselves may feel the need for alternative strategies, like bringing a gun to a knife fight. And it’s right under our nose: distributed generation from rooftop solar coupled with battery storage and microgrids may be the ultimate backstop for security at critical services. Peter Lilienthal, CEO of HOMER Energy based in Boulder, draws a bright line: ‘The only way to truly assure high reliability of electric service is by adding more energy at the customer’s end of the distribution system.’
HOMER specializes in helping military outposts, remote communities and especially islands to design self-contained microgrid systems to run off high penetrations of renewables. Lilienthal emphasizes that remote communities are leading innovation for microgrids and such models can show us ‘grid folk’ how to diversify our energy security as the component prices plummet.”