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Plug into personal power, from the roof, the walls, or the garage
FOUR TIMES SQUARE, A NEW 48-STORY office tower, looks much like any other modem skyscraper in the heart of New York City. Crane your neck a little, however, and you'll notice the top II floors of the sleek glass exterior are unusual. The building's fashionable, light blue skin contains an array of electricitygenerating solar panels. Dig a little deeper, and you'll find a bank of giant fuel cells lurking on the fourth floor, silently turning natural gas into power. Four Times Square is its own freestanding environmentally friendly electric utility. `As soon as corporate dealmakers and the general public understand the value of these kinds of buildings, they're going to insist on them," predicts Bob Fox, the building's lead architect.
Since Edison's first lightbulb, an increasing number of people have tied their energy fulfillment needs to the grid of interconnected power lines. Now the trend is reversing, and do-it-yourself power is taking off. Local blackouts and Y2K anxieties have home owners and office managers alike worrying about a power grid failure. At the same time, freestanding energy sources are getting cleaner, cheaper, and prettier. They can even be money-savers. Thirty states now require utilities to use net metering, which allows consumers who generate their own power to cut their energy bills by selling back any excess. Soon, many buildings could sport solar cells on the roof, natural gas turbines and fuel cells in the basement, and a link to a wind turbine up the hill.
Some of the most dramatic changes have popped up in solar power, long dismissed as visually...