Community microgrids are functionally illegal in most of the United States, yet climate-driven outages are getting worse. Cameron Brooks of Think Microgrid explains why wires laws block resilient grid solutions and what it costs us to keep burying lines instead.

Burying power lines costs $4 million per mile in Colorado and up to $9 million per mile in California. That means every 20 to 25 feet of buried line costs as much as it would take to equip a home with a full battery backup system capable of riding through a 48-hour outage. Cameron Brooks, founder of Think Microgrid and E9 Insights, joins host Tim Montague to explain why that staggering opportunity cost keeps getting overlooked.

This episode tackles the regulatory barriers that keep community microgrids illegal in most US territories, the structural incentives inside the utility model that favor capital investment over cost-effective distributed solutions, and the specific state-level reforms beginning to create new openings.

Here is what you will learn in this conversation:

• You will understand why community microgrids are functionally illegal in most US states.
• Find out why burying power lines is an incomplete strategy for wildfire risk.
• You will learn how the utility cost-plus regulatory model actively works against distributed energy.
• Find out what a microgrid actually is and why energy storage changes everything. Cameron defines the three qualities of a true microgrid.
• Understand what early policy wins look like at the state level. From Ann Arbor's supplemental energy utility to Maine's wires law exemptions and Colorado becoming the fourth state to authorize plug-in solar.

The combination of rising power prices, extreme weather, and growing electricity demand from data centers and transportation electrification is putting real pressure on the centralized grid model. States like Utah, Maine, and Colorado are already writing new rules.

Connect with Cameron Brooks, Think Microgrid

Cameron Brooks: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameron-brooks-/

Website: https://www.thinkmicrogrid.org/
Tracker: tracker.thinkmicrogrid.org

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