Are Decentralized Renewable Microgrids 'The Power Plant of the Future'? (wired.com) 117
Long-time Slashdot reader joemite shared Wired's report about a small town of Basalt Vista, Colorado, where homeowners like Katela Escobar are testing highly scaleable "advanced power grid technologies that could turn every home into an appendage of a decentralized power plant."
Basalt Vista is designed to be an all-electric community that produces as much power as it uses. Each home comes outfitted with an electric vehicle charger in the garage, a large battery pack in the basement, and a roof covered with solar panels. The homes are linked together as a microgrid, a self-contained electricity distribution network that can operate independently of the regional electric grid. Their energy systems work together to balance the energy load across the neighborhood — the solar panels harvest energy, plugged in EVs can store electricity as needed, and large battery packs can supply power when the sun isn't shining.
But what makes Basalt Vista's microgrid unique is that it autonomously allocates power. There's an internet-connected control box in the basement of each home running experimental software that continuously optimizes electricity distribution across the microgrid and the flow of energy to and from the larger regional grid. When one home produces more energy than it needs, it can autonomously make the decision to redistribute it to its neighbors or store it for later... Basalt Vista is a testbed for a so-called "virtual power plant," a network of self-optimizing energy resources that unbundles the centralized utility and distributes it across the grid... [T]hey aggregate and control distributed energy sources so they can perform the functions of a large centralized power plant — generating and storing electricity — for the wider grid. This virtual power plant could serve as an antidote to the inherent variability of renewable energy systems by efficiently matching supply and demand across widely-distributed electricity producers and consumers.
For now, the technology exists in the basements of Escobar and her neighbors at Basalt Vista. But if the experiment is successful, it may one day control power for millions of other families.
Basalt Vista is designed to be an all-electric community that produces as much power as it uses. Each home comes outfitted with an electric vehicle charger in the garage, a large battery pack in the basement, and a roof covered with solar panels. The homes are linked together as a microgrid, a self-contained electricity distribution network that can operate independently of the regional electric grid. Their energy systems work together to balance the energy load across the neighborhood — the solar panels harvest energy, plugged in EVs can store electricity as needed, and large battery packs can supply power when the sun isn't shining.
But what makes Basalt Vista's microgrid unique is that it autonomously allocates power. There's an internet-connected control box in the basement of each home running experimental software that continuously optimizes electricity distribution across the microgrid and the flow of energy to and from the larger regional grid. When one home produces more energy than it needs, it can autonomously make the decision to redistribute it to its neighbors or store it for later... Basalt Vista is a testbed for a so-called "virtual power plant," a network of self-optimizing energy resources that unbundles the centralized utility and distributes it across the grid... [T]hey aggregate and control distributed energy sources so they can perform the functions of a large centralized power plant — generating and storing electricity — for the wider grid. This virtual power plant could serve as an antidote to the inherent variability of renewable energy systems by efficiently matching supply and demand across widely-distributed electricity producers and consumers.
For now, the technology exists in the basements of Escobar and her neighbors at Basalt Vista. But if the experiment is successful, it may one day control power for millions of other families.
Grid 2.0? (Score:2)
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Pedal faster, the fan is spinning too slow.
Now that is a network of user-generated content I can "trust!"
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There were 27 units built with this technology. Sure hope it scales. And that the homeowners do a better job at defending against hackers than a utility power company does. I expect Amazon will offer access to it via Alexa, and then it's all over.
Give me a house, and I'll volunteer to keep the neighbourhood small-scale nuclear reactor in my sub-basement. I can keep my irradiated survival food in my basement just above.
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At least you will be able to claim that all the food stored in your basement is 100% free of germs (or perhaps, that it will contains a large number of microscopic mutated threats) :D
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First, a network of small grids is very problematic in regard to compatibility... even if they are all build to the same specs by the same company.
It isn't just a matter of pumping electricity into the transmission lines. The shapes and phases of the sinewaves must be matched to near-perfection. Otherwise each "node" adds to the noise and you end up with a failed system.
Second, as mentioned, each node is presumably subject to security vulnerabilities. Both soft
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There is a standard for harmonic contribution by inverters under IEEE (stds 519 and 1547); all UL rated equipment meets it. "Matching to near perfection" is called synchronization and it has been done with meters since the '20's; with modern power electronics this is a non-issue. All rated inverters pass a "5 minute test" where they monitor system power before switching in for voltage and frequency. Wider frequency bands are a real thing that small disconnected microgrids have to deal with. A microgrid cont
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It is not a "non-issue" with modern electronics. In fact it was a very big issue just a few years ago in calls to upgrade our outdated grid system... which was the point I was addressing.
A serious attempt at sabotage using a deliberate voltage out of phase would trip elsewhere (the far ends of the lines in the subs your are connected to).
That was my point. I wasn't trying to suggest it would irreversibly damage the grid. Any damage would probably be to that local node. But it could serve to shut down part of the grid. If that were done in enough places at the same time, you could have outages over a very
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I presented a paper to the NYS Society of Professional Engineers on how the Ukraine grid was brought down and how ours would fare under similar attacks. One of the things I looked at was the Aurora attack using spinning generation. That would have enough umpf to actually make the attack work. Inverters have no rotational intertia and with current ride through settings lack this capability.
Anyway, what's the impact? I managed to get one plant to trip itself offline. Most DER (anyway, everything above 20MW) i
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My whole point -- the third time I am saying this now -- is that a system of massively multiple small nodes can be a noise problem. I did NOT (as I explained in my last post, in so many words) say it would "bring down the grid".
The only "problem" I discussed about in THAT context was causing local distribution nodes to shut down. Nothing more. But if you managed to bring enough of them down (I was referring to a deliberate attempt to bring many local nodes down) you migh
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The only "problem" I discussed about in THAT context was causing local distribution nodes to shut down. Nothing more. But if you managed to bring enough of them down (I was referring to a deliberate attempt to bring many local nodes down) you might cause something more serious.
I cannot prevent you from misunderstanding or misrepresenting my context, but (repeat, yet again) I was referring to deliberate attempts to attack many nodes at once.
Not THE (Score:5, Interesting)
They're not going to be THE power plant of the future any time soon, but they will make an important contribution. They're not going to meet the needs of manufacturing.
One of the big problems with distributed generation is maintenance. With current battery technologies, failing at maintenance means fires. And they're not even the only components that can turn into fire. Flames can come out of other parts of the system as well.
I'm still hoping that we do solar power satellites. They make a lot of sense. But you don't want to beam that power into neighborhoods, it needs to go into rectenna fields, probably in deserts.
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I'm still hoping that we do solar power satellites.
Solar arrays need to be more efficient before it is cost-effective to put them in space. But the problem is that improved efficiency also improves terrestrial solar arrays. So space-based can't pull ahead.
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The problem with mirrors is that they don't solve the problems of having to pass through atmosphere. Using rectennas does, because you can pick a frequency which passes through clouds.
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You don't need heavy arrays. In fact, they're a liability. You want light arrays that unfold/unroll and which can continue to function when repeatedly perforated by micrometeorites, space garbage, etc. You can't make solar panels which can resist being punctured, so you have to make them tolerant of it. If they shatter when impacted, they're useless in that environment.
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Mirrors: mylar
Lightweight array: organic solar cells on plastic substrate.
Weight difference: less than a factor of 10
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There are plenty of places that rarely have clouds. The high Mojave Desert of California/Nevada and the Sonoran Desert of Arizona are mostly cloud-free, especially in the summer when AC use drives up demand. Demand peaks in July and August, and is highest in the late afternoon (4-7 pm).
In the rare event of clouds over a panel array, the mirror can redirect to a different array.
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You could always experiment with a range of battery technologies.
Flooded-cell lead-acid. Dumb, but reliable, simple maintenance, and they don't tend to go up in flames. Lifespan about 10 years if treated right.
Nickel-iron - horribly inefficient, but very long-lived.
Redox flow batteries - not a lot of information yet about their performance in domestic situations.
Various lithium types.
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Deep-cycle marine batteries. Long life span, can handle deep discharging without taking serious damage, some models are serviceable (as in you can yank and desulphate the plates, put back in, top off with fresh acid, and you have a practically-new battery) and the non-serviced life is usually ~20 years.
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The non-serviced life is nowhere near twenty years, unless you don't count watering the batteries. Desulphation is not guaranteed to work. You sometimes have to just recycle the plates. They are also big and heavy, which makes handling them more expensive, especially since you can only use half of their capacity without damaging them.
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I hope the glass electrolyte batteries turn out to be viable. They have all of lithium's strengths, and very few of the weaknesses. Notably, they would be non-flammable.
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I'm still hoping that we do solar power satellites. They make a lot of sense.
I'd like to see your math on that. Everyone that has done a serious engineering analysis finds orbital solar power is an energy sink.
Even Elon Musk, a space and solar enthusiast of the highest order, lost all hope of space based solar as an energy source of the future.
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Orbital solar addresses the chief complaint with solar - they work every day, and even somewhat into the night. We need space-based manufacturing to make them cost-effective, though, which is just one more reason to develop asteroid mining technology.
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We're not going to space to mine asteroids without nuclear power.
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Space is a fine place for nuclear power, as I've said to you multiple times before. Keep it off of Earth.
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You are not getting it. There is no space program unless there is nuclear power on Earth.
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Why do you think that?
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Whether you want it or not is not relevant. You will get nuclear power. That's been true for 50 years now. There is no replacement for nuclear power.
If you want to claim that solar + batteries will replace nuclear power in 10 years then that's certainly optimistic. It also doesn't tell us what to do until that happens.
Space based solar might be the future of energy but we aren't going to be putting anything into space if we aren't building nuclear power plants on Earth.
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But you don't want to beam that power into neighborhoods, it needs to go into rectenna fields, probably in deserts.
Don't fly through the beam.
Space based is the wrong way to go, very high maintenance, and far too frail. Dig a few miles into the ground and find all the heat energy you will ever need.
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It's not a beam. You spread every satellite's transmission out across the entire rectenna field. That way even if you aimed it at a city it wouldn't fry anything.
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The Earth's core is a giant nuclear reactor, so why not make better use of it?
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The Earth's core is a giant nuclear reactor, so why not make better use of it?
Because the global average of this "nuclear reactor" is about 50 milliwatts per square meter.
https://www.withouthotair.com/... [withouthotair.com]
There's obviously a few hot spots on Earth where we can draw far more power than this but this means a lot of other places that do far worse. Geothermal power might be great if you live near one of these hot spots but not so helpful for those that do not.
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Geothermal is everywhere. In some places you just have to dig a little deeper.
And I did not dispute that. What I pointed out was the land area required for a given power output. With geothermal this is about 50 milliwatts per square meter. For comparison I'll give the power output per area for a number of other energy sources.
Hydroelectric dams: 0.02 W/m^2 (The power produced by the rainfall, taking into account how much area is needed to collect enough rain to fill the reservoir behind a dam.)
Solar: 10 W/m^2 (You will often see a number closer to 100 W/m^2 but that is for direc
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A typical solar panel is 15-20% efficient. In my area, we get an average of 5 solar hours per day. So over the course of a year, our solar panels supply an average of around 30-40 W/m^2. If we got much less than that, we wouldn't bother installing solar panels. Berlin gets about 3 solar hours per day. On average, I'd guess that around 30 W/m^s averaged over the course
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From the website that says the following?
Ok, the guy's an idiot. Your entire argument is debunked.
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I didn't say that microgrids made it more dangerous. I said it's a problem. It's already a problem, but if we tried to depend on distributed solar with batteries then we'd need more of them and then it would be a bigger problem. Right now many if not most residential solar installations include no battery because they are expensive and require maintenance.
As for the EV battery solution, that is a good way to address some of these problems, but it doesn't require that the EV and the solar be attached to the
No (Score:2)
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Evil fossil fuelers (Score:2)
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What happens when you have five days of shitty cold weather? Buy electricity from those evil fossil fuelers?
Well I imagine you will get the power from the Grid which is still connected in this setup so I suppose for now yes
but If your talking about what happens in 20 years when everything starts going renewable then
you start talking about DC power lines and places like California and Texas.
Tres Amigas SuperStation (DC Powerline Interconnector) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
California renewables https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]
Texas WindPower https://www.cbsnews.com/news/t... [cbsnews.com]
A power line to Hawaii? (Re:Evil fossil fuelers) (Score:3, Informative)
Go tell Japan where they are going to run those wires for this "supergrid".
Japan figured out a long time ago that they don't have a chance of keeping the lights on without nuclear power. This was made even more clear after Fukushima. As much as the would like to use wind, solar, geothermal, wave, or whatever power source none can be as abundant, clean, safe, and reliable as nuclear power.
Then there's Hawaii, South Korea, Israel, and so many other places in need of energy where they cannot rely on friendly
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"The future is nuclear power."
So you keep saying. I disagree. Let's you and I agree to discuss it again in 20 years, if we're both still here.
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Go tell Japan where they are going to run those wires for this "supergrid".
Well I would think they would have to go through the sea of Japan or along the routes of Shinkansen lines
but I don't see this really being a major obstacle really one of finance.
Then there's Hawaii, South Korea, Israel, and so many other places in need of energy where they cannot rely on friendly neighbors to build a large electrical grid to spread out the load of inherently unreliable wind and solar power.
Hawaii will not have a problem they are already heading to renewables
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As for Submarines the next generation of subs will use Fuel cells powered by Hydrogen and will be almost impossible to find as they will be ever so quiet.
https://nationalinterest.org/b... [nationalinterest.org]
Did you fail to notice the phrase "littoral waters" in that article you quoted? Unless you're speaking of "hydrogen fusion", hydrogen is not and never will be a source of energy. It is simply a means of storing energy generated by other means and the generation of that hydrogen involves the associated losses associated with any conversion of energy from one form to another.
Every time I see or hear of some idiot spewing "oh, we'll just use hydrogen as an energy source", I know that I have a reliable indicato
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As for Submarines the next generation of subs will use Fuel cells powered by Hydrogen and will be almost impossible to find as they will be ever so quiet.
https://nationalinterest.org/b... [nationalinterest.org]
Did you fail to notice the phrase "littoral waters" in that article you quoted?
and what of it ? let me quote the previous lines
"German shipbuilders have recently offered larger, longer-range versions of the 212/214 submarines, the Type 216 and 218."
Unless you're speaking of "hydrogen fusion", hydrogen is not and never will be a source of energy. It is simply a means of storing energy generated by other means and the generation of that hydrogen involves the associated losses associated with any conversion of energy from one form to another.
I hate to break it to you but Submarines are not Commercial vessels therefore just like Nuclear Submarines the cost of the fuel is not the most important factor. Stealth is what you want as these Subs would be used for Spying , Intercepting communications , Transporting special forces etc the fact that these Subs are almost undetectable by modern Technologies must make the Navy's of the worlds mouth water.
Every time I see or hear of some idiot spewing "oh, we'll just use hydrogen as an energy source", I know that I have a reliable indicator that the person in question is simply parroting some other idiot and their statements may be safely ignored.
It is your close mindedness that is the issue here
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I see that you didn't bother to read and understand the article either. A "record breaking" 18 days underwater. "Can operate for 3 weeks". The main advantage for those submarines is that they're cheap. The main purpose for those submarines is local defense in local littoral waters. And as I told you before, hydrogen is not and never will be an energy source. So go crawl back under the bridge you crawled from under.
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I see that you didn't bother to read and understand the article either. A "record breaking" 18 days underwater. "Can operate for 3 weeks". The main advantage for those submarines is that they're cheap. The main purpose for those submarines is local defense in local littoral waters. And as I told you before, hydrogen is not and never will be an energy source. So go crawl back under the bridge you crawled from under.
"Can operate for 3 weeks".
ahhh but that's how long most Submarine's operate without resupply as its the time the Fresh food runs out only 4 Navy's operate Submarine's for 6 months underwater China ,Russia, USA and Britain and the reason they do that is because they have Nuclear missiles and they wish to hide.
Now the article does not talk about Fuel but it wouldn't surprise me if its about 3 months and a near silent Submarine with just 25 crew just think of the possibilities.
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Geothermal is nuclear power. That reactor's been running for millions of years. Just got to dig through a lot of crap to use it, that's all.
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Japan figured out a long time ago that they don't have a chance of keeping the lights on without nuclear power.
I was there in 2011 when all the nuclear power in the entire country went offline at once and didn't come back for years. The lights stayed on. The electric trains kept running. It's a matter of historical record, you don't have to take my word for it.
Japan is actually blessed with vast, vast amounts of wind power off its shores. Far more than it could ever use, and much of it in shallow water where it's easy to build turbines. They don't need nuclear, they need investment and vision.
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Indeed, there was a major effort to save power. They actually went much further than they needed to with it, the grid was able to make up for some of the loss from other sources.
Six months later things were more or less back to normal really. There were some nice improvements, e.g. some of the lifts got firmware updates that turned the lights off when they were not in use.
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The new extra big battery can last that long? The wind might be at the right speed some days and nights?
Battery ??? Nah Pumped Hydro and DC power lines
https://www.ramblingsdc.net/Pu... [ramblingsdc.net]
https://www.hydro.mb.ca/corpor... [hydro.mb.ca]
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Then a new a mega-battery as the old a mega-battery gets too old some years later.
ISP lockin? just hope it's not comcast and gateway (Score:2)
ISP lockin? just hope it's not Comcast and hope you are not forced to rent an gateway at $15-$20 /mo
These worry me (Score:2)
As for why that's bad, well, masses of disenfranchised poor are readily trained into storm troopers and secret police by charismatic leaders...
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Free? No. But depending on the utility, power service can be subsidized by wealthy payers depending on how the rates are structured. Utilities with high per-kWh rates and low connect fees tend to shift burden away from small, poorer customers that might not use as much power to people who use quite a lot. High connection fees and low per-kWh rates do the opposite.
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With traditional grids the way they scale means it's always worth while to give the poor electricity.
so the poor currently get free power from the utilities?
's/poor/residential customers/'
Power plants are built for 3-Phase Industrial / Commercial customers. They need significantly more power and pay significantly more money. Residential customers pay for electricity, but they are (in-effect) subsidized by the 3-Phase customers.
Wind will also play a part (Score:2)
tragedy of the commons (Score:2)
Unless there is a pretty hefty price for drawing more than you generate then this will eventually fail as some few realize they can draw more then they contribute.
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Each home decides how much power it is willing to contribute to the grid, looking out for its own needs first. You can only draw from the grid what others are willing to send to you, just like now. The system probably includes reporting so that it's possible to account for over-users, but I didn't rtfa.
Not In Germany. Coal is King (Score:2)
What does a German family of 11 people, with all their horses and sheep, do when they’re told their farm is going to be razed down for a coal mine?
https://twitter.com/i/status/1... [twitter.com]
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What does a German family of 11 people, with all their horses and sheep, do when theyâ(TM)re told their farm is going to be razed down for a coal mine?
Maybe they should ask their government to reconsider their plans to abandon nuclear power.
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Germany is phasing out all kinds of coal and whether you like it or not they don't want nuclear in their back yard and they are doing fine with renewables.
Opening a new coal mine is not "doing fine with renewables". If that's "doing fine" then I'd hate to see what "doing badly" looks like.
Whether Germany likes it or not they will have to rely on nuclear power to keep their lights on. They can produce this nuclear power domestically or they can buy it from countries like France, UK, and Spain.
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This not a new mine. Coal and lignite use for electricity production reduced 20% in 2019 and is lower than ever. Germany also had net exports of 37 TWh of electricity last year. Renewables produced 243 TWh and nuclear only 75 TWh. (source: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen... [ag-energiebilanzen.de]) So no, Germany does not rely much on domestic nuclear and it also does not rely at all on nuclear power from France , UK and Spain, or elsewhere. Everybody who spends 5 minutes to check the numbers can see this.
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What does a German family of 11 people, with all their horses and sheep, do when they’re told their farm is going to be razed down for a coal mine?
Honestly ? East German Power stations built before reunification an abundance of lignite coal which is really cheap to mine and protests against the loss of jobs with East German regions being some of the poorest areas in Germany.
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Easy answer (Score:2)
No.
Easements? (Score:2)
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Mighty fancy way to say "solar with battery" (Score:2)
The answer is sort of, for some areas... a big draw for me with solar is mostly making enough power that the house is self-sufficient enough to run a freezer/fridge, and some electronics.
You can't do that everywhere, but where you can why not?
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You can't do that everywhere, but where you can why not?
Because it costs a lot of money.
I remember having a discussion with someone on the viability of running our houses on solar power. We live in the US Midwest and so I did some digging on data on how much it would cost to replace electricity from the grid with electricity from rooftop PV.
I found that in the winter I'd have enough electricity for my lights and appliances but I'd still need heat from natural gas. In the summer I'd likely have enough electricity to not only power all my lights, appliances, and
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Seems to me, that if you have a micro-CHP, you could get improved overall efficiency if some of the devices that use power are changed to use heat instead. For instance, in the summer, the heat from the CHP is mostly useless. But what if your air conditioner and freezer used an absorption cycle instead of vapor compression?
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You can't do that everywhere, but where you can why not?
Because it costs a lot of money.
I remember having a discussion with someone on the viability of running our houses on solar power. We live in the US Midwest and so I did some digging on data on how much it would cost to replace electricity from the grid with electricity from rooftop PV.
I found that in the winter I'd have enough electricity for my lights and appliances but I'd still need heat from natural gas. In the summer I'd likely have enough electricity to not only power all my lights, appliances, and air conditioning but likely enough left over to charge up an EV for daily commutes.
All of this only cost ten times what I paid for electricity now.
I'll grant some caveats here since it's possible I oversized the batteries considerably, but the batteries were a relatively small part of the overall cost. Perhaps the PV panels and the electronics needed to manage them became lower in cost since then. That still leaves a very wide margin to make this a viable replacement for the electricity we get here in the Midwest from far less expensive coal, natural gas, onshore wind, and nuclear.
Here's another thing I did the math on, the cost of producing my own electricity from a natural gas generator. I discovered that if the generator cost nothing in capital and maintenance costs that I could produce my electricity at the same price I pay the utility. I suspect that nobody will give me a generator, or pay for it's upkeep, but it shows that it's going to be very difficult to compete with the economy of scale from a utility.
One means to reduce this cost of running a natural gas generator is to use the heat from the generator to heat the house and/or water. I believe that it will be residential sized combined heat and power (CHP) units that will be the future of decentralized "virtual" power plants.
In places where there is snow the potential for solar PV panels to produce nothing for days on end is very real. These people will need heat and light. Batteries will be nice but there still needs to be something to charge them regularly, and batteries built to last days will become impractical in size and/or costs.
Micro-CHP is likely in our future.
Regarding the price of rooftop solar and PV panels, ten times? ... when did yo do your digging? in 2003? There is no 'perhaps' about the price of solar having fallen off a cliff. The LCOE of rooftop solar is about three times that of utility scale solar (in the US, unsubsidised). Utility scale Solar and wind, however, are some of the cheapest energy generation methods available today. In fact if you live in the Mid West a large portion of your energy is likely to come from wind plats:
https://sites.uci.e [uci.edu]
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What is really expensive is Nuclear energy. Nuclear plants are obscenely expensive. They habitually go over budget.
You pick one nuclear power reactor out of the 400 or so civilian nuclear power plants to make your point? One plant does not define the average.
Is it possible that with some practice we will learn how to make nuclear power plants at a lower cost? Do so with fewer cases of being over budget and behind schedule? I believe that is possible. One thing we need to stop doing is build every nuclear power plant differently. We should find out which designs work best and pick perhaps the top three. Then build
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You might find this feasibility study [mdpi.com] interesting. Looking at the island of Sark in the English Channel, it has an energy crisis as its far away from everywhere else and thus has to pay through the nose for power. 66p/kWh is common - 6 times the mainland price.
So they thought about going 100% renewable and be energy independant.
Turns out its still rather expensive, on the mainland you woulnd't even consider it, bu it did make sense for Sark's circumstances.
As for microgrids, I doubt it'll ever happen unless
The future is wind, hydro, geothermal, nuclear. (Score:2, Informative)
Make a list of the energy sources we have available to us. Then rank them on the metrics that matter to you. Metrics like cost, requirements for material/land/labor (which will be tightly correlated to cost), safety, abundance, and of course CO2 emissions. You'll find a number of them come out on top. Those being onshore wind, geothermal, hydro and nuclear. Solar power, in any form, doesn't make the cut. It costs twice as much for double the CO2 emissions. That doesn't mean people won't put PV panels
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Few nations have the design skills and experts to do their own nuclear... so its a full turn key import.
Re "If we rule out fossil fuels" some nations dont do that and keep the lights on and their production lines working..
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Hydro only works with land to give away to a dam.
Pumped Hydro only requires a large enough "head" or drop.
If you have an old mining pit all that is
needed is two reservoirs at the top and bottom and a pumped turbine in between.
You then have storage many times that of the worlds largest grid battery's.
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/... [theengineer.co.uk]
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As per normal, people are talking as if this all has to happen overnight where suddenly all fossil fuel plants etc are magically replaced with cleaner systems. It takes time to update infrastructure, "Rome wasn't built in a day" would be a good adage to apply.
Wind, solar, and biomass power are not new technologies. They have been used in some form since humans were human. We've been trying to optimize these energy sources for a very long time. In the USA nuclear power went from nothing to 100 GW in capacity in 30 years. We stopped building mostly out of political reasons. I believe we can repeat that feat of new nuclear power construction, and even do so twice as quickly. It's quite possible we will have to, because the fleet of nuclear power plants built
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In Germany, solar produced 47 TWh of electricity in 2019 which is substantial. The latest tender in Germany, set a mean 4.33€ cts/kWh which is competitive with on-shore wind in Germany. The strike price for the planned nuclear plant Hinkley Point C in England translates to 12 €-cts/kWh and this plant is planned to go online in 2025. Also price for solar still drops exponentially and faster than any other power source. (source: Fraunhofer ISE). By looking at actual numbers and projects, I think
Okay.. (Score:1)
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Australia and Colorado pioneer load-balancing (Score:2)
Basalt and southern Australia both have implemented pilot projects which incorporate residential clusters of renewable solar/battery systems onto the electrical grid.
Tesla are involved with Australia and the results are standing the test of time, reliability and cost-efficiency. However, the gird operators determine how usefully they are able to integrate clusters from their end of the network. SO Basalt's experience will be more about the grid operator's network capability than the cluster of micro solar
Obvious question with no obvious answer (Score:2)
What happens if someone regularly consumes more energy than they produce? Do they have billing set up? Do you pay your neighbors?
What happens when a crypto-currency miner moves into the neighborhood?
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I didn't read through the article to see if this is the case in Basalt Vista (in keeping with the finest Slashdot traditions). But one capability that many smart grids have is the ability to control local loads. While they may allow short term inequities in energy consumption, it wouldn't be too difficult to include a rule in the control algorithm to ensure that the use is equitably balanced in the long term. You want to mine crypto currency with your share of power? Fine, as long as you get approval from t
Horse shit shovellers (Score:2)
Right now I generate 3 times the solar power I use and get a credit for my feed-in from my electricity provider.
Soon I will have NiFe batteries and could give the grid the flick,
or if my provider will pay more for peak solar/battery feed-in, it will pay for itself and in the future give a return on investment.
I don't give a shit about providers loosing money or being inefficient.
Horse shit shovellers went out of business with the internal combustion engine.
Problem for conservatives is they are rearward look
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I think you are confusing the power grid with telecommunications grids. I didn't see anything that says they don't have global Internet connectivity. Aside from that, it is possible to set up an isolated Intranet, or neighborhood-wide LAN without connecting it to the world.