Your ideas about creating our own energy are absolutely right on in my opinion, Bud. New technologies are coming on line which make it possible for us to do away with huge transmission projects and the centralized grid. More effort needs to be put into requiring solar technology (and other on-site technology) on new construction. In the Valley, we need to start building small 10-25 megawatt concentrated solar thermal generators. (A meagwatt supplies 1,000 average size homes.) We don't have quite the amount of sun as the desert, but we have enough to make such projects more than feasible. These can be tied into the local grid without consternation to landowners. Admittedly, they do not produce the huge amount of energy produced by the Tehachapi wind farms (6500 MW) or proposed desert concentrated solar thermal units (1,000 MW per unit), but neither will they be so environmentally destructive; they will not degrade thousands of acres of desert ecosystems. Moreover, smaller local grids are not vulnerable to modern threats like state-wide outages and terrorism. Much more needs to be done to develop home grown electrical generation.