Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

This paper describes two stylized alternative visions in popular currency of how the power system might evolve to meet future requirements for the high quality electricity service that modern digital economies demand, a supergrids paradigm and a dispersed paradigm. Some of the economics of the dispersed vision are explored. Economic perspectives are presented on both the choice of homogeneous universal power quality upstream in the electricity supply, and also on the extremely heterogeneous require-ments of end-use loads. Finally, the potential role of microgrids in delivering heterogeneous power quality is demonstrated by reference to two ongoing microgrid tests in the U.S. and Japan.