Distributed Generation may include any combination of solar photovoltaic (PV), microwind generation, combined heat and power (CHP), landfill gas, waste-to-energy, geothermal, and biomass energy. Consumers are often surprised to find out on getting a bid for a solar PV project how expensive the project is, and how little energy the system produces compared to their total bill. Still, government and utility incentives are robust enough to draw many consumers into a solar PV program. Should they move beyond net metering to actually having energy to sell back to the utility, the issues become more complex.

Ecomergence understands that as grid parity approaches, more and more businesses and consumers will embrace the benefits of solar PV and the energy independence that it brings. Ecomergence understands the potential of solar PV and the complexities that arise as solar PV penetration surpasses 20 percent. Ecomergence knows ways that solar PV can be presented to consumers to make a bigger impact, sooner, and ways that the utillity can incorproate more DG into their plans and integrate the resources with their Smart Grid.

The operational and financial benefits of shifting energy consumption away from peak times are well understood by utilities. But how to implement a successful DR program is less well understood, especially when it comes to hundreds of thousands of residential consumers who lack either the motivation or the knowledge of how to shift their consumption to meet utility needs.

Ecomergence understands that energy information provided as dynamic feedback for consumers has potential, but does not believe that graphs and charts will meet the goals utilites have for peak shfiting. Ecomergence has unique perceptions on the means to promote consumer behavior that is consistent with the operational needs of the utility.

A growing awareness of the importance of energy efficiency is evident in governmental funding programs, state energy efficiency standards, and utility attention. But the details of becoming more energy efficient can be confusing, even overwhelming. Those consumers who take the time to understand all the steps to be more efficient find a wealth of information on the web, especially on utility and government websites. But too often, the work required to assemble such fragemented information, to find reputable contractors and to find ways to make energy efficiency projects affordable defeats budding ecofit projects. It's just too much work and the payoff is too low.

Ecomergence understands the confusing array of options and has found a better way forward with its Ecofit program for residential homeowners, neighborhoods and communities.

Without access to economical energy storage options, a complex system evolved over the course of the 20th century that relied on balancing energy supply to meet energy demand on the grid from moment to moment. Perhaps no other area has the potential to disrupt the utility delivery model in place for the last century and technological innovation is making great strides in the field of energy storage. Large-scale systems will meet the needs of utilities, and community-scale options will find application in neighborhoods, but personal-scale energy storage is likely years away, given the costs and relative lack of efficiency at level.

Ecomergence understands the potential of adding storage to consumer renewable energy solutions to address concerns over intermittency, to enable shifting consumption to off-peak periods and to make plug-in hybrid cars a realtiy. Storage has the potential to make the distributed energy revolution real, to enable true energy independence, and make change more practical and affordable.

Curiously, some of the very first cars were powered by electricity. But soon the internal combustion engine gained prominence, and for one hundred years, two great industries developed in parallel. Combining the electricity industry with the automobile industry would truly be revolutionary, but numerous hurdles remain.

Hurdles, including development of economical and portable energy storage technology, development of electric charging infrastructure, resolution of impacts on utility operations, and increasing PEV driving range must be addressed before the true potential of plug-in electric vehicles will be realized.

Ecomergence understands the implications of hundreds of thousands of mobile storage units plugging and unplugging from the gird in a distribution utility territory. The system has never experienced mobile electricity consumption on the scale that a PEV transition implies.

Ecomergence anticipates a pilot program in every utility territory over the coming decade as charging infrastructure solutions come on line. Utilities will become the source of fuel for this new transportation option, and understanding consumer adoption patterns and consumer best practices as they emerge will be vital to crafting a viable PEV strategy.

As the foundation of most smart grid projects, an AMI deployment is not just a complex project, but also a necessary first step to transition to a Smart Grid. But as the recent class action lawsuit filed by citizens in Bakersfield, CA, against PGE has shown, the complexities of an AMI deployment can lead to unintended impacts and negative consumer opinion.

Ecomergence understands AMI and the Smart Grid. Ecomergence has the experience to help utilities anticipate consumer issues and implement a program to prevent negative outcomes like those being experienced now in California.

In Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means, author Albert-Laszlo Barabasi explains that the science of networks was a sleepy academic backwater until the internet gave scientists a tool to study how networks work, and their discoveries since have been breathtaking. Networks are the best means to organize complexity, from the role of hubs, to the Power Law distribution curve , to the concept of emergence, Barabasi shows how much alike networks are: from the network of the human body to social networks, cities, railroads, airports, to the internet.

In Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software, author Steven Johnson shows how nature is organized around the concept of emergence - bottom up behavior patterns - and how we as humans in society can learn valuable lessons regarding the organization of complexity from nature.

In Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organi-zations, author Clay Shirky "context- ualizes the digital networking age with philosophical, sociological, economic and statistical theories and points to its major successes and failures. Grassroots activism stands among the winners." Shirky shows how easy access to information was the first wave of internet innovation, e-commerce the second, and now easy group formation is the third wave.