Why Community Microgrids Are Illegal in Most of the US #350

About this episode

Cameron Brooks discusses the legal challenges facing community microgrids in the US and the high costs of burying power lines.

Community microgrids are functionally illegal in most of the United States, yet climate-driven outages are getting worse. Cameron Brooks of Think Microgrid explains why wires laws block resilient grid solutions and what it costs us to keep burying lines instead. Burying power lines costs $4 million per mile in Colorado and up to $9 million per mile in California. That means every 20 to 25 feet of buried line costs as much as it would take to equip a home with a full battery backup system capa...

People in this episode

Hosts: Tim Montague, John Weaver

Guest: Cameron Brooks

Topics covered

• community microgrids
• resilient grid solutions
• climate-driven outages
• power line burial costs
• energy infrastructure

Keywords

• community microgrids
• climate outages
• power lines
• energy costs
• resilient grid

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Think Microgrid

Places: United States, Colorado, California

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