The turn to distributed generation

The inherited electricity system was designed on a single principle: build very large generating units, connect them with high-voltage lines and distribute outward. It is the cheapest way to make electricity and the easiest to interrupt.

What distributed generation means in practice

Gas piston and gas turbine units of a few megawatts, installed close to the load they serve — a hospital, a district heating plant, a water utility, an industrial site.

Cogeneration, where the same unit produces electricity and useful heat, which roughly doubles the fuel efficiency where a heat customer exists.

And rooftop and small ground-mounted solar with battery storage, which covers daytime load without any fuel supply chain at all.

Why the topology changed

Because a hundred small units cannot be disabled by the same number of events as three large ones. The economics are worse per megawatt and the resilience is far better, and in the circumstances the second consideration dominated.

What it requires

Grid codes that allow small units to connect and to island — to keep running a local network when the main grid is down, which is the whole point and which many grid codes do not permit.

Fuel logistics, because a gas piston unit is only as reliable as its supply.

And metering and settlement rules so that a site can both consume and export.

What should be kept afterwards

Cogeneration on district heating, which pays for itself in fuel savings alone, and the connection rules, which are cheap to keep and expensive to rebuild.

When a customer buys their own generating set it does not mean they have lost faith in the grid; it means they have priced two sources and decided to keep both. I have seen this on almost every plant visit since 2022. The move to distributed generation happened less as an energy policy choice than as thousands of separate businesses pricing the same risk the same way.