Laying the Groundwork: Lessons Learned from the Telecommunications Industry for Distributed Generation; Preprint

The telecommunications industry went through growing pains in the past that hold some interesting lessons for the growing distributed generation (DG) industry. The technology shifts and stakeholders involved with the historic market transformation of the telecommunications sector mirror similar factors involved in distributed generation today. An examination of these factors may inform bestpractices when approaching the conduits necessary to accelerate the shifting of our nation's energy system to cleaner forms of generation and use. From a technical perspective, the telecom industry in the 1990s saw a shift from highly centralized systems that had no capacity for adaptation to highly adaptive, distributed network systems. From a management perspective, the industry shifted fromsmall, private-company structures to big, capital-intensive corporations. This presentation will explore potential correlation and outline the lessons that we can take away from this comparison.