The national power grid was historically designed to hold more capacity around urban areas and less around rural areas. Makes sense, right? Urban areas use more energy so the power grid around urban areas should have capacity to hold more energy.
The problem: most renewable energy is generated in non-urban, rural areas.
This presents two obstacles. First, renewable energy must travel a lot further than energy generated from tradition sources (think: fossil fuels) to even make it to the national power grid. This translates into higher costs. Second, the power grid must have enough capacity to hold the renewable energy that does make it to the grid. Since the power grid was designed to hold less capacity around rural areas, this limits the amount of renewable energy that can go into the grid.
So how will the Obama-Biden comprehensive New Energy for America plan ensure that 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012? and 25 percent by 2025? Will a rehaul of the national energy grid be in order?
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