Presented at 2019 GEI & China-Africa Energy and Power Conference organized by GEIDCO at Beijing, PRC. Demonstrating how connecting regional grids improves quality of life and raises standards of living. Thinking globally but acting locally to fight climate change.

1. Global Energy
Interconnection
Business and Cultural Implications:
Solar + GEI = P2P Energy Abundance

2. Universal Electrification:
Statement of Need
• UN World Food Program Report (2019)
• 113 million people in 53 countries
live in “acute hunger emergency”
• Add’l 143 million live in “stressed
nutritional conditions”
• 3.1 million children die of
undernutrition annually
• 8,500 children per day
• African countries overwhelmingly
at greatest risk

3. World Game
Simulation Workshops
• Organized by Dr. R.
Buckminster Fuller,
inventor of Geodesic
Dome
• First conducted at
Southern Illinois
University in 1970’s

4. World Game
Simulation Workshops
• Conducted at colleges and corporations in 1970’s
• Simulation exercises - opposite of “war games”
• War games prepare for war; world games prepare for peace
• World Game Objective:
• “How can we make the world work…
for 100% of humanity…
in the shortest possible time…
through spontaneous cooperation…
without ecological damage or…
disadvantage to anyone?”
• Highest priority strategy: Global Energy Interconnection

5. World Game: Global Energy Interconnection
• Connect regional electricity grids into worldwide energy network

6. World Game: Global Energy Interconnection
• Connect regional electricity grids into worldwide energy network

7. Global Energy Interconnection
• Connect regional electricity grids
into worldwide energy network
• Connect renewable energy
resources (hydro, solar, wind)
• Phase out energy generating
plants causing greatest pollution
• Provide universal access to
electricity
• Goal: 2,000 kWh per capita/year

8. The Global Energy Network:
Potential Benefits
• Turn back the clock on global
warming
• Universal increase in living
standards
• Reduction in hunger and poverty
• Stabilize population growth
• Increase in trade, cooperation
and peace between nations

9. Unique Properties of Electricity
• Basis of civilization – access to
electricity sets standard of living
• Fastest way to balance earth’s
“energy accounts” – travels at the
speed of light
• Can’t be easily stored
• Used on a time-sensitive basis
(peak vs. off-peak)

10. Electricity: Basis of Civilization
• Developed world: 2,000+ kWh per capita
• Developing world: 1,000 – 2,000 kWh per capita
• Poverty: Less than 1,000 kWh per capita

11. Electricity: Basis of Civilization
• Clean drinking water and adequate water
treatment systems
• Refrigeration: stable food supply and
medicines
• Reduction of disease and infant mortality
• Improved standard of living: stable
population growth
• Correlates with high literacy rate
• Stable economy with steady job growth

12. Electricity: Basis of Civilization
Maslow’s
Hierarchy
of Needs

13. Electricity: Supply vs. Demand
Fastest Way to Balance Earth Energy Accounts
• Earth’s Daily Energy Input:
174,000 Terawatts
• Earth’s Daily Energy Needs:
13.4 Terawatts
• Every day, Earth receives
12,000 times
as much energy as civilization uses

14. Electricity: Supply vs. Demand
Fastest Way to Balance Earth Energy Accounts
• Energy Not Always…
• the right kind of energy
• at the right place
• at the right time…
• Not a supply problem, but a
distribution problem
• Electricity travels at speed of light
• Only commodity that can be traded,
delivered and used immediately

15. Electricity: Time-Sensitive Demand
• Electricity needs change
throughout the day
• Peak needs only occur briefly
during day
• Avg needs usually ½ what
peak needs are
• Baseload needs usually ½
again as small
• Large amounts of energy
wasted as generating facilities
are started and stopped during
the day

16. Think Globally, Act Locally
• In 2001, largest U.S. home
improvement retailer agrees to
offer solar panel install for home
• Starting with 3 stores in San
Diego, now hundreds of stores in
over a dozen states
• Currently generating over $100
million in business for Home
Depot and SunRun

17. Think Globally, Act Locally
• In 2005, Stellar Solar
launches, now SoCal’s
oldest and most successful
solar company
• Sales in excess of $30
million per year
• Installing hundreds of
solar homes and
businesses every year
• Energy consumers
become solar “prosumers”

18. Home Solar Creates Energy Prosumers
• California “Net Metering” Program:
• During day, homes spin meter
backwards, selling power back to grid
•At night, homes “buy back” power
sold during the day
• Each of these solar homes are new
nodes on the energy grid
• Electricity connection into house is
now a 2-way pipe

19. Long-Range Opportunities
• Growth in renewable energy “pro-sumers”
• Aggregators seeking contracts on blocks
of solar, wind and clean energy as
“premium power”
• New industry: Hardware and software for
energy management and energy
transactions via Blockchain
• “Peer-to-Peer” energy trading over longer
distances
• New reliance on HVDC backbones

20. Long-Range Opportunities
• The “purpose” of HVDC super-grid is to
create a market for buying, selling and
delivering lowest-cost clean, renewable
energy
• The larger the super-grid, the more robust
and resilient the marketplace
• Current regional markets for power
trading have saved their participants Billions
in U.S. dollars:
• Cal-ISO’s Energy Imbalance Market - $1 billion
• Gulf Cooperation Council (7 countries) - $76
billion projected
• BC Hydro’s trades now over $1 billion
• PJM Interconnect - $2 billion

21. Our Energy Challenge
“Where there is no vision,
the people perish.”
Proverbs 29:18

22. Future Energy Vision
• A homeowner in San Diego captures
kilowatts for trade to a homeowner in
Shanghai
• Instead of running all of the world’s
generators half the time… we will run half
the world’s clean generators all the time.
• Successful phase out of fossil fuels,
reversal of climate change
• Universal access to electricity… and a
reasonable standard of living, world-wide:
“A World That Works for Everyone”

23. Thank You.
www.geni.org
www.stellarsolar.net