Lance McKee: Protect and Enhance Citizen Autonomy

Many US citizens suspect that big institutions work against them, and they fear unfamiliar and complex requirements that threaten to further befuddle and impoverish them. Distrust is likely to increase in the likely scenario that energy becomes more expensive and less reliable and the recession persists. So it's imperative that the Smart Grid be implemented in ways that actually, obviously and directly protect and enhance citizens' autonomy, mental comfort and financial security.

One way to do this would be make the smart grid default a simple device that displays the minute-by-minute grid price for electricity. Homeowners would turn appliances on and off manually or set them to respond to price communicated within an isolated home network (which also displays usage), instead of responding to shut-off instructions from the utility and giving the utility more information about usage than it already gets from a standard meter. This assumes, of course, a dynamic and transparent free market in electricity.

Smart grid acceptance would benefit from feed-in tariffs and other policies to encourage microgeneration. Homeowners and small businesses selling electricity would likely accept distribution companies' requirement for enough digital information to protect line workers and to balance load & supply, but this information exchange could be minimal and isolated from home networks.

Another way to reassure homeowners and small business people would be to promote policies that encourage rather than forbid micro-grids, and that encourage off-grid passive homes. The Smart Grid can be positioned within the framework of the Obama administration's place-based policy initiative, which is consistent with basic conservative values of individual and local autonomy.

Also, Senator Cantwell's "cap and dividend" bill, which would redistribute proceeds from a carbon tax to middle and lower income homeowners, could include incentives to invest the dividend in home energy efficiency and microgeneration. Incidentally, a global boom in microgeneration might do more than anything else to raise the median global income level that Americans are unavoidably sinking to because of globalism.