Distributed Generation

Distributed generation is emerging as an exciting new approach to stationary power generation in the US and around the world. The term "distributed generation" is used to refer to small-scale power generation devices that can be placed "on-site" at manufacturing plants, office buildings, and even residential homes. This approach varies from the current paradigm of large-scale, centrally located power plants connected to customers via miles of networked transmission and distribution lines that is predominant throughout most of the industrialized world.

Emerging new DG technologies include small, high efficiency internal combustion engines, mini and micro turbine generators, solar photovoltaics and fuel cells to name a few. DG may require a very different relationship between energy providers and energy consumers. Understanding these potential shifts and their implications is extremely important to those companies selling DG and developing DG-based services and solutions. History has shown that many new products, technologies and business models fail not because the technology isn’t innovative and valuable to consumers, but because existing organizations, paradigms, behaviors and supporting infrastructures are not congruent with the new product, technology or business model.