Leia Guccione

Small, efficient off-grid renewable energy systems with batteries could change life for homeowners — and trigger big societal changes.

New RMI report identifies when and where solar-plus-battery systems could help customers defect from utilities affordably.

We tend to think of colleges, and especially students, as our future -- not only the students themselves, the next generation of leaders, but the actual campuses, from which we can learn about our electricity future.

While most of the U.S. still relies on large-scale centralized electrical generation and long-distance transmission, university campuses are one U.S. sector that has embraced microgrid technology.

"We have met the enemy and he is us."

So said the long-running American comic strip character Pogo in a 1970 Earth Day poster about pollution. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world's most respected scientific authority on the climate change topic, recently said much the same thing.

The electricity industry’s been abuzz recently about the need for a more resilient grid. As a result, microgrids are quickly becoming the industry’s topic du jour -- in fact, they’re the theme of the current July/August issue of IEEE’s Power & Energy magazine. However, nobody is talking about what is likely the most compelling reason to invest in microgrids: to prepare for the zombie apocalypse.