But Joel Gordes, a former Air Force navigator and head of Environmental Energy Solutions, warned Tuesday at the Northeast Sustainable Energy annual conference that this fancy of director Stephen Soderberg's imagination could become a very real terrorist attack on America's centralized power system.

"You can get a relatively low-cost ($400) weapons system called a flux-compression generator that can make an electromagnetic pulse," Gordes said. "We used to talk about how every time you blow up a nuclear devise you get an electromagnetic pulse that will wipe out your semiconductors. Basically, it would take us pretty much back to the stone age ... anything with a computer chip in it would not work."

Gordes said that the centralized power grid has long been seen as vulnerable and recently a terrorist target. Richard Clark, a former White House counter-terrorism adviser, has warned as much. "The owners and operators of electric power grids, banks and railroads; they're the ones who have to defend our infrastructure. The government doesn't own it, the government doesn't operate it, the government can't defend it."

Gordes offered a solution in his Tuesday workshop -- distributed generation. The Department of Energy defines distributed generation as "a variety of small, modular power-generating technologies that used to improve the operation of the local electricity delivery system. These systems can be combined with energy storage and power management and are usually, but not always, connected to an electricity distribution grid." This means smaller power generation plants, including nuclear, solar, and biodiesel, that are located closer to the homes and businesses where the power is meant to be used. This reduces energy lost in transmission and creates what Gordes calls "microgrids."

Not only is distributed generation an excellent opportunity to integrate renewable technologies, said Gordes, but a redundant, separately administered, power system would lesson the effect of a terrorist attack on the system by decentralizing power.

The concept is as old as the stock market: diversify in order to reduce risk.

Distributed generation, Gordes writes in NESEA's publication "Northeast Sun," offers multiple benefits.

"(Placement of diverse fuel generators) avoids costly vulnerable, ugly, and inefficient transmission systems and increases energy security in two ways. First, it reduces our dependence upon foreign oil and the increasing need for foreign liquefied natural gas. Second, it provides resiliency when used with the existing power grid, providing high reliability and power quality demands in a digital society."

Dave Sjoding manages the Northwest Combined Heat and Power Application Center in Olympia, Washington, where six states collaborate on distributed generation projects that serve to provide both heat and power. He said that despite transitional costs, utility companies benefit because a great degree of stability is added to the existing grid through the integration of alternative energy sources.

"Distributed generation reduces transmission and distribution issues," he said. "Now the power is produced locally and used locally and you're not having to move it a huge distance."

And as far as national security goes, Sjoding said that the benefit is obvious, "As you bring distributed power into the system, you ensure that all the eggs are not in one basket."

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