When most people think about electricity, it’s likely that one of three things comes to mind: the services electricity provides (e.g. lighting, refrigeration, TV, computers, etc), its steadily increasing cost (thanks to that friendly monthly or quarterly reminder from your utility), or – in my case at least – a not-so-fond memory of trying to get over an electric fence.
But I think you would hard pressed to find someone in the general public who would immediately say anything about how electricity is generated. Apart from seeing the occasional cooling tower or transmission pylon, the generation and distribution of electricity is largely hidden from view. Turn a switch, pay the bill, and the rest of the system does the rest.
In many ways, this is a great strength of centralised electricity systems. The end user doesn’t have to see the 300 railcars worth of coal per day rolling past their door on the way to supply a modern power plant. However this invisibility represents a distance between users and producers, hiding us from the costs of electricity production. Or more specifically, making it difficult for us to see how our demand for electricity might lead to acid rain, climate change, radioactive waste and other impacts.
The appeal of microgeneration is that it makes these impacts visible. By generating electricity in the home (and aided by a monitoring device), a household can see whether they are generating enough electricity to meet their needs and if not, they know that this difference must be provided by the grid. This gives microgenerating households control: you choose how much electricity to use and when to use it, making the most of the clean electricity in your home and avoiding the side-effects of grid-supplied electricity.
In other words, small is beautiful because small is visible.
PS. It probably goes without saying but I highly recommend reading E.F. Schumacher’s book Small is Beautiful
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