How to convince industry experts like these authors of this Gristmill article, that an internet enabled grid could be 100% renewably powered without backup fossil/nuclear power or large scale electric power storage systems?

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/7/17/94038/1275#18

We need more of this energy industry insider perspective to hone our arguments.

How to move the debate around to storage/conservation now?  With an internet enabled grid that stores energy in the form of heating/cooling in everything from your home freezer to the thermal mass of malls.

For instance,cool a mall's floor down (using geothermal cooling that uses a fraction of the energy of air conditioning, that's conservation) during hours with lowest power demand and coast on that cooling for the next 24 hours (that's storage), right through the peak demand time.

Since building heating/cooling produces 36% of our GHG emissions,and large scale wind could provide 95% of our grid power already, this indicates there is more than enough buffering capacity in heating/cooling alone to dispense with other storage.

This is without adding the effect of charging plugin vehicle batteries off peak and doing large scale industrial heating/cooling in such a way as to smooth the grid.  Like recycling glass during off peak grid time and using the waste heat to generate power during the peak.

With an internet enabled grid, energy use could be timed over the whole grid to make electrical storage of power unecessary.  Even in a 100% wind/solar powered grid.

Now how to make industry  insiders like the authors of this article realize and incorporate this information about an internet switchable grid into energy policy?  

Show them it is the bottomline profit path of the future.  That motivates the corporate leviathan.  Prodded by a message about profits, then the monstrosity begins to move a bit.

Then utilities will race to compete in this area, with customers all connecting their various high energy use heating/cooling  devices through switches that are controlled by the smart grid.  Eventually plugin vehicles will connect through these switching systems too.

These authors are the ones to convince.  But will they interact on revolutionary concepts like this?  Hard to say.

We have had a number of comments by utility engineers here in the grist blog in the past year.  There is reason to hope!  These voices of everyday working utility engineers were positive and helpfull.  

Board room sentiment?  Less than helpful?  Most likely.

I met several utility execs at the Midwest Renewable energy fair from Wisconsin electric, they were happy to report their new policy of paying 23 cents per kwh to customers for their solar PV electricity and raise the limit on 11 cent per kwh wind to 100kw generators. 

More hope!!