Team DALE
Our mission is to realize the full potential of clean energy by helping others understand, initiate, develop, champion, and advocate for Distributed, Autonomous and Local Energy (DALE). And we emphasize ways that local energy resources support local income, community, autonomy, and decentralization.
Connect, Learn, Contribute, Assist, and Spotlight
We are a global professional community geared to bringing about real change in the world. We are working to provide a world-class and long-term "base of support" for those trying to understand, initiate, develop, champion, and advocate for distributed, autonomous and local energy. We are telling the growing story of local energy and helping others become part of that story. We are gathering experience and learning and helping others to learn. We are crowd-sourcing a knowledge base with the best web resources to inform and empower action. Our base includes:
Online Community
Our community includes professionals from non-profit, for-profit and public spheres. Experts, conveners, researchers, advocates, innovators, consultants, policy-makers, community leaders, business strategists, business associations, staff from regulatory affairs , foundations. and public agencies
Video Library and Web Resources
A crowd-sourced knowledge base that compiles, curates, and makes visible the best web resources (videos, web pages, publications, social media threads and channels, regulatory proceedings, advocacy opportunities) for understanding, initiating, developing, championing, and advocating
Experts Provide Assistance & Guidance
We can crowd-source answers to useful questions, respond to requests for assistance as small teams or individuals, collaborate to develop and share local energy stories, engage in"great debates", Not consulting and not just forum replies, hands-on and interactive but modest and purposeful.
Partner for Advocates and Policy
We can provide partnership and knowledge to help both advocates and policy-makers better understand solutions and strategies We can assist those already advocating for local energy or wanting to start, and our members can engage side-by-side with other advocates in local or national proceedings.
Stories from Leaders and Champions
We are seeking and putting together the stories of local energy from jurisdictions and communities across the world. Stories can include what happened, who did what, what worked, what was learned, what was missing, and the relevant technical, social, policy, business, and finance dimensions
Visibility for Who is Doing What
Visibility for those in the local energy space, including companies, non-profits, public entities, institutes, advocates, community groups, etc. . What is already being done? Are synergies possible? What is still missing/ What connections or types of increased visibility or connection might help?
Ways to Participate
This is a call for initial interest and participation to help build and pilot Team DALE. With our vision and purpose in mind, your own ideas and initiative are welcomed! Anything is possible! How can we make a real difference in the world?
Be a Founding Member
There is no obligation or requirement for membership. Some members may wish to learn and connect. Others may wish to join discussions and contribute ideas. Or help build our community. Or perhaps just offer corrections and critiques. All members are encouraged to share Team DALE with others.
Be a Contributor
Add video and knowledge content from your own sphere, experience, or organization. Seek, curate, and tell the "story" of local energy in your jurisdiction or community. Identify leaders and champions. Provide links to web pages, webinars, events, regulatory proceedings, etc.
Be an Expert Resource
Develop the best questions that others want to know, and collaborate to provide and curate answers.. Be on a roster to volunteer to answers questions or provide hands-on assistance to leaders, champions, initiators, and innovators.
Be a Link to What Others Are Doing
Conduct outreach to project developers, businesses, communities, policy-makers and advocates to learn what they are doing, what they need, what is missing, how they could benefit from something Team DALE could provide. Also consider and plan how we might respond to those needs
Be an Intern
Help develop Team DALE, including the web site, video and information content, moderation, communication with members, etc. Agreement required, from minimum 20 hours per month up to half-time.
What Should You Do?
Join us! There is no obligation in becoming a member other than holding an intention to further our mission -- whether in your own work, your own learning, or in collaboration with us. Also consider taking on a further role as contributor, expert resource, moderator, link to others (even just your own organization), public speaker on behalf of local energy, or intern. Then schedule a one-on-one Zoom call with Eric Martinot to talk about Team DALE, and your own interests, perhaps to re-connect with Eric from long ago or to introduce yourself, and consider attending one or more upcoming monthly Zoom webinars/all-team meetings open to all members.
Are There Perks or Rewards?
Times are tough for many and very tough for some. We recognize you may have lots on your plate already. Team DALE is starting out as an all-volunteer effort with a view to sustainably remaining in existence through 2030 and beyond. At some point in 2023 we should open a discussion for ideas about business models, value creation, and priority uses of any monies obtained. Eric Martinot is leading Team DALE purely as a volunteer as well. He can offer a few things:
Make a Difference in Your Community and the World
We are on a long-term mission and journey to bring about real change. You can help to identify and do the right things. To do that we must together not only with our brains, but with our hearts and our spirit.
Make Connections, Get Recognition and Visibility
You will meet others, work with them on something innovative and extraordinary, and be recognized for your contributions. Get visibility among the leaders, champions and innovators that we may help.
Get Credit, Affiliation, and Resume Experience
We can keep track of your contributions with monthly or task-based action reports and logging hours. The hours you spend and your results can be recognized in the future. Shall we also have badges and awards?
Use Our Tools and Teams to Further Your Own Work
Get help developing or debriefing your public talk or event related to local energy, for example. Get ideas for a project or program. Use our forum, knowledge base, online whiteboard, email, Zoom. There are many possibilities!
What Is Distributed, Autonomous and Local Energy?
A variety of different "use cases" make up the local energy space. Many sub-variants of each basic type exist, especially when considering that a wide array of different ownership, financing, policy/incentive, and technical design models accompany each type of use case. Team DALE's discussions, video library, web resources, and communications can all be organized by use case using tags. In the real world, much business and development occurs with parties focusing on only one particular type of use case or sub-variant. Team DALE believes all use cases are potentially relevant and applicable to the global future of distributed, autonomous and local energy.
Residential Solar
Solar power installed on residential rooftops or elsewhere on a residential property can feed power into the grid and also be used for self-consumption by households. Installations are also common on multi-family buildings, with either all households sharing a common installation or individual households connected to individual installations. Increasingly combined with local battery storage which starts to make these use cases look like Building-Integrated Energy cases.Roofing-integrated solar such as solar tiles represents a growing segment of this use case.
Commercial Solar
Commercial solar tends to be much larger installations than residential. Commercial solar can include rooftop installations and "building integrated PV (BIPV)" such as solar-integrated side-cladding or windows, but also includes a variety of other locations not on commercial buildings themselves, for example covered parking structures, landscaped areas., highway medians or soundwalls, and bus shelters, Power can be fed into the grid and also used for self-consumption in associated or nearby commercial buildings.
Community Solar
Local solar installations owned by multiple members of the community under various financial arrangements and installaed in public areas or on public or community buildings.
Community Wind Power and Local Wind Power
Local wind power can be a single turbine or a larger wind farm, either owned commercially or as some form of community asset (Community Wind Power). Definitions (and debates) of what is considered "local" wind vary as to size, location, grid-connection, and how much local consumption is served from wind power vs. being fed into a bulk grid for distant consumption.
Battery Storage, "Solar-Plus-Storage," and Backup Power for Grid Outages
Batteries can placed in many different locations in relation to the grid -- in buildings as part of solar systems or building-integrated energy systems, on distribution grids, and on higher-level transmission grids. Battery storage can act as both a controllable load and a controllable generator and can be integrated as part of many of the other use cases described here. Battery storage coupled with distributed generation (as well as distributed heat storage, see use case further below) can also serve as backup power in times of grid outages or curtailments.
Building-Integrated Energy
At the building level, electricity and heat from solar or geothermal can be integrated with energy storage (both battery and heat storage), smart appliances, and bidirectional electric vehicle charging/discharging. This can allow the building to operate autonomously, semi-autonomously, or in modes that support the power grid and reduce monthly energy bills.
Microgrids
Microgrids are self-contained power systems that can supply power and heat to local buildings and industry, often clustered such as campuses, industrial parks, commercial districts, or shopping centers. Microgrids may contain many of the other local energy use cases, all tied together, coordinated, and connected to outside grid for importing or exporting power.
Distributed Energy Within Utility Distribution Networks
Solar, wind, battery storage, and managed or bidirectional EV charging can all become integrated with local grid distribution networks on the "utility side" of the customer meters ("in front of the meter" or FTM), helping to supply power to consumers connected to that local distribution segment (feeder) and also providing balance and stability to the segment that can allow deferred or avoided upgrades to transformers and other utility equipment. Third-parties (including third-parties such as "community choice aggregators" and other non-utility entities supplying power to local consumers) or the utilities themselves can install such equipment depending on the regulatory environment.
Controllable Loads and Demand Response
Power grid loads that can be controlled in real time in response to external control signals or autonomously in response to grid technical conditions are a form of "demand response." There are many variations of demand response but utilties and regulators have come to categorize such controllable loads as "Distributed Energy Resources."
Electric Vehicle Integration with Grid ("VGI" and "V2G")
Electric vehicle charging can be controlled or managed in ways that provide benefits to the grid, and bidirectional EV charging/discharging can allow EVs to serve as temporary generators onto the grid. In such schemes EVs become legitimate "Distributed Energy Resources" the same as demand-response, solar or stationary batteries. Such schemes are called "VGI" for vehicle-grid integration and "V2G" for "vehcile-to-grid.
Local Energy Trading and Markets, Peer-to-Peer, and Blockchain Energy
A variety of internet-based mechanisms have emerged to enable local energy producers to sell their power to nearby consumers, usually with permission of and payment to the local electric utility for use of its wires to transfer the power locally. Electricity can be generated locally via many of the other use cases described here.
Community Power Systems and Social Organization
There are many diverse forms of community power systems and organization that may draw upon the other use cases here and integrate them at the community level, and/or provide local social organization of energy or choice of energy. This is a very broad use case category at the moment. Examples include multiple investments in multiple sources designed to meet the energy needs of a specific community, or "community choice aggregators" in the United States, or "virtual power plants" where multiple local sources act in concert.
Building-Scale Hot Water and Heat, also with 24-Hour to Multiple-Day Thermal Heat Storage
Local solar, geothermal, biomass, and microturbines can all be used to produce hot water and heat, either for household consumption, commercial use, or industry. Thermal heat storage, when coupled with the heat generation either at the single-building-level or serving clusters of buildings collectively, can extend heating service over 24-hour periods and even over multiple days or longer periods.
District-Scale Hot Water and Heat
Hot water and heat produced or available locally can be distributed via "district heating networks" to large numbers of buildings and consumers on a district- or neighborhood-scale. The sources of such heat can be waste heat from nearby fossil-fuel power plants, or local geothermal or biomass power plants or heat-only boilers.
Off-Grid (Autonomous) Power Systems for Buildings and Communities
Off-grid power systems are typically solar coupled with battery storage, for remote dwellings and buildings, remote commercial and industrial uses, and mobile or semi-mobile uses such as tiny homes, camping vans and recreational vehicles. More complex off-grid power systems can be so-called "hybrid systems" that include some combinations of diesel generator, wind power, solar power, biomass power, and/or battery storage, Community-scale hybrid power systems are typically found in remote rural areas, especially in developing countries as alternatives to grid extension.
Local Energy for Local Food
Local solar, wind, geothermal, and biogas can all be used for local food production, from irrigation pumping and greenhouse heating to food processing and cold storage.
Local Bioenergy
Agricultural and forest products waste can be burned to generate local power or converted to bogus and used in local gas networks or for household cooking. Bioenergy feedstocks likely come from within a small local region due to transport costs. There are debates about the sustainability and environmental impacts of local bioenergy that accompany such use cases.
Community-Scale Hydro
Small dams or run-of-the-river hydropower, often called mini-hydro, micro-hydro, and pico-hydro, can provide power to local communities. Such hydro is much more prevalent in developing countries for small villages.