Infrastructure (Brent Barker, Electric Power Research Institute)
What issues will affect the future of energy? Let an EPRI* expert fill you in. *Electric Power Research Institute is one of the nation's leading energy industry think tanks.
Infrastructure, the basis for running our economy from the electric power system to the water system to roads, bridges, thing of this type are infrastructure. There's always the temptation not to upgrade the infrastructure, to exploit the existing infrastructure and not to build for tomorrow. Really need to be building for tomorrow. If we're not investing for tomorrow, and we're talking billions of dollars, then we have an economy that is running away from the infrastructure. The infrastructure cannot support the future economy. That's a dangerous situation. It means it becomes a drag on the economy, so we need the investment in basic infrastructure, electricity and communications being the center of it, to allow our economy to grow. The future system will definitely have microgeneration and macrogeneration. I think you'll find a grid that basically integrates all of that. So the future will be fully integrated systems from large power plants down to the microchips -- fully integrated, self-healing. So that the grid -- if something's happening in one part of the grid -- it takes care of itself. It isolates that part because it has sensors everywhere. So you have intelligence, smart feedback coming from everywhere in the system.