Fuzzy Signals

Leapfrogging the Grid

This is an article that came out of my UNESCO Summit on Leapfrogging the Grid in the Developing World in early February in the periodical, Nature (19 February 2004 Volume 427 Issue no 6976).

Access to all of the webcasts of most of the speakers in plenary can also be found at the World Technology Network (WTN) website, in addition to their powerpoint presentations.

I speeches I recommend are Tom Casten, Chairman of the World Alliance for Distributed Energy (WADE). WADE, by the way, has some great papers on their website about distributed energy. The "Financing Dilemmas" panel had some good insights as well. Geoffrey Ballard's talk is also worth reviewing. Ben Cook's remarks on local community perspectives were well-received, especially the message to think about this through a customer demand-perspective, from their perspective not ours.

Of course the best conversations happened over coffee, over the wonderful food, and in the smaller sessions. But here is a flavor of what happened. Insights on what I learned to follow.