Hard to believe, but true.  A simple blogger.  Somebody has to do it.

It IS about fuel Sean.

And turning to a distributed generation/storage grid.

The cleanest backup fuel for the grid?  Biogas, second is natural gas.  And both of these fuels are easily stored and distributed, on already existing gas pipelines.  Biogas is more easily and efficiently generated in a distributed manner.  Less transportation of farm waste and biomass, and the organic fertilizer byproduct.

Distributed generation of this type using solid oxide fuel cell/turbines is 70% efficient.  And nearly all the remaining 30% can be used as cogenerated heat.

This mode of backup allows the rest of the grid load to be met completly by fuel-less GHG free renewables, wind, solar, water.

So how could laws be changed to enable a smart grid to accept and manage these power sources, and use storage to minimize energy use?

How could subsidies be distributed to make this happen as quickly as possible?

I worry that cogeneration projects added onto coal or nukes will be an excuse to continue using these sources, until the payback for the projects is reached.  Smart coal and nuke operators would cooperate with your company to divert attention from alternatives like a renewable distributed smart grid and storage/conservation.

When the more reactionary utility operators see the beauty of cooperation with cogeneration efforts, diverting renewable energy revoltion, and bribe politicians to pass lobbyist written laws; it might just tend to hurt renwable energy rather than help.

Then there are the more progressive utilities like Xcel (1000 home smart grid building in Colorado, extensive wind farms, and even utility scale battery wind power storage)and Wisconsin Electric (voluntarily paying 23 cents per kwh to solar panel owning customers for their power sold back into the grid).  Maybe these utilities should be the ones that green politicians listen too?

Here is an article on the solid oxide fuel cell Sean. It works on biogas from brewery waste.  Several other breweries are doing this.

Why is it about fuel?  Because biogas eliminates 25 times the GHG it emits when used in the fuel cell.  By curtailing methane emissions from manure and biomass waste, by substituting organic fertilizer for GHG intensive chemical fertilizer, and reviving soil as a carbon sink.

This makes biogas THE best fuel by far.  And natural gas further backs up the distributed generation system of fuel cell/turbines.  Which still produce waste heat to harvest.

BTW these fuel cells use microturbines, an already commercialized product.

Also, coal can be converted to natural gas underground with recently discovered naturally occuring bacteria.  Making the grid backed up with these distributed biogas fuel cell/turbines viable even in an emergency where natural gas starts to run out.

Like a year without a summer, caused by volcano or asteroid strike.

Oh and another great aspect of biogas fuel, trains are being converted to use methane in Sweden.  Diesel generators on locomotives can be converted to methane.  Also a fuel cell/turbine car behind the locomotive could power it from methane at twice the efficiency.

Turbines run on methane, aircraft turbines.  A new nanotech development of a metal matrix that stores record amounts of methane is in development.