Open Letter to U.S. Energy Secretary Chu: Fix the Grid Now

Galvin Electricity Initiative Executive Director Kurt Yeager sent an open letter to Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, congratulating him on his cabinet appointment and calling for Chu to take immediate action addressing the unreliable, inefficient and insecure U.S. electricity grid.

While President-elect Barack Obama’s electricity plans include modernizing the nation’s grid infrastructure, Yeager disagrees with some grid modernization advocates who suggest that maintaining a centralized system under regulated monopoly control is the best approach. The Initiative and Yeager hold that the key to quickly creating a smarter grid is by creating local smart microgrids — small, modernized versions of the electrical grid built by private sector entrepreneurs at the local level that incorporate clean, distributed and renewable resources and are capable of most efficiently balancing supply and demand at all times.

Read the full letter.