Can Open Source Speed the Adoption of Clean-Energy Microgrids? (linuxfoundation.org) 38
This week the Linux Foundation announced the publication of The Open Source Opportunity for Microgrids: Five Ways to Drive Innovation and Overcome Market Barriers for Energy Resilience. "The research informs readers about microgrids — groups of distributed energy resources designed to improve energy resiliency, with the ability to operate as part of a larger electrical grid, or separately as an island."
The report highlights the current state of the microgrid market and explores the potential for open source technology to accelerate the adoption of microgrids worldwide... The report concludes that microgrids are an essential tool to improve energy resilience and advance decarbonization, and that the market faces a range of challenges that the open source ecosystem is well positioned to address.
Among other things, the report "examines how participation in relevant open source programs and activities can help address gaps and challenges," according to the announcement, "and accelerate the learning, development, and governance of microgrid initiatives." One focus of the report is "enabling market innovation toward energy resilience at scale, supporting the Energy sector to adopt proven open source-enabled business models, security benefits, and cost reductions demonstrated in the IT and Telecom industries."
And according to the foundation's senior vice president of research and communications, the report also "describes the opportunities for open source to accelerate the proliferation of microgrids as a mechanism for clean energy production and consumption."
The report highlights the current state of the microgrid market and explores the potential for open source technology to accelerate the adoption of microgrids worldwide... The report concludes that microgrids are an essential tool to improve energy resilience and advance decarbonization, and that the market faces a range of challenges that the open source ecosystem is well positioned to address.
Among other things, the report "examines how participation in relevant open source programs and activities can help address gaps and challenges," according to the announcement, "and accelerate the learning, development, and governance of microgrid initiatives." One focus of the report is "enabling market innovation toward energy resilience at scale, supporting the Energy sector to adopt proven open source-enabled business models, security benefits, and cost reductions demonstrated in the IT and Telecom industries."
And according to the foundation's senior vice president of research and communications, the report also "describes the opportunities for open source to accelerate the proliferation of microgrids as a mechanism for clean energy production and consumption."
Can Open Source ... (Score:1)
Can Open Source Speed the Adoption of Clean-Energy Microgrids?
Bbbuut! NUUCULAAR?!?
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Exactly! Portable nuclear generators on wheels. We can make them small enough to fit in the carry-on
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Exactly! Portable nuclear generators on wheels. We can make them small enough to fit in the carry-on
Yeah! And then throw the radioactive waste into public landfills!! NUUCULAAAR!!!
Re:Can Open Source ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Nuclear, like gas and hydro, provides inertia - something that contributes to grid stability and which micro-grids are lacking, which is why they are micro.
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Nuclear doesn't provide stability. For stability you need generation that can react to demand very quickly, and nuclear is terrible for that.
What nuclear provides is "base load", but that concept is rapidly becoming obsolete. In fact the head of the UK's National Grid said so back in 2015, so it's not even a recent development.
Besides, many countries can't have or don't want nuclear power, so it's very important that we find solutions to reaching net zero that don't mandate it.
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Nuclear doesn't provide stability. For stability you need generation that can react to demand very quickly, and nuclear is terrible for that.
Use batteries for that.
How is this even an argument any more if the immediate response to concerns of the intermittency of wind and solar power is to use batteries? Do people think that the batteries care if they are charged by nuclear fission or solar PV? They don't care.
Even better is that we can use thermal energy storage with nuclear fission to deal with this problem. Natural gas turbines are often used to manage rapidly changing loads but the heat that run these turbines don't have to come from burn
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Nuclear plants adding molten salt heat storage systems shows just how desperate they are. Base load is no longer the cash cow it once was, so they are trying to match fossil fuel plants' ability to vary their output over the medium term.
The old base load cash cow is long dead.
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Nuclear plants adding molten salt heat storage systems shows just how desperate they are.
Adding energy storage systems to the electrical grid is an act of desperation now? Are you even listening to yourself?
The technology for these molten salt thermal energy storage systems are derived from what was used in concentrated solar thermal power. Is adding energy storage to solar power also showing how solar power plants are getting desperate?
There was something on Slashdot about Bill Gates giving funding for one of these nuclear power plant prototypes that included some kind of thermal energy stor
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Lots of designs, nothing that actually delivers.
Not unless they are nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
Renewables need multiweek storage and that's a game for the big boys.
Salt caverns and exhausted gas fields aren't everywhere.
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Not enough electrolyzer capacity and surplus electricity yet.
ACES, Hystock, etc. Lots of storage coming online.
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Depends what you do with the power, especially in a micro grid that still has a grid connection.
I live mostly in Thailand. And even during rain season a cloudy sky delivers ample of power.
So, for what or how could I store energy?
Well, I could have an oversized freezer that even in this climate can go down to -30C. Not that I need it, for ordinary use -10C is enough, but: if the power is gone, it has cold storage, for several days. Unlikely that several days in a row there is not enough sun to at least keep
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It won't be down to individuals to provide things like pumped storage, obviously. Individuals will provide short term storage via batteries and EVs, and roof space for solar.
It's not at all hard to get a large proportion of your energy from home solar+battery. It doesn't have to be 100%, you don't have to have gigawatts of storage so you can supply the rest of the neighbourhood. 70%+ is very easy to reach and if everyone does that it will go a long way towards making electricity generation net zero.
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It won't be down to individuals to provide things like pumped storage, obviously. Individuals will provide short term storage via batteries and EVs, and roof space for solar.
It's not at all hard to get a large proportion of your energy from home solar+battery. It doesn't have to be 100%, you don't have to have gigawatts of storage so you can supply the rest of the neighbourhood. 70%+ is very easy to reach and if everyone does that it will go a long way towards making electricity generation net zero.
Hard? No.
Expensive up front and limited in capability? Yes.
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Renewables need multiweek storage and that's a game for the big boys.
Found the guy who thinks he's a nerd who's never heard of distributed systems. Hey noob, some of us were building clusters of computers 30 years ago, and you don't think we can build clusters of batteries today?
Troll comment is trolling. (Score:3)
What you are talking about is total and complete solution but that is not what decarbonization is but rather it's final goal. Decarbonization is about reducing the total amount of CO2 emitted. Doing so reduces amount of fossil fuel-based energy systems that need to be replaced. In this case they are focusing on the use of electricity by lowering the barrier for entry for on-site power generation.
Just because it's not a perfect solution does not mean it should not be done. Insisting on a perfect solution all
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Either they store energy locally, or they link up to make one huge global net that includes not only some part of the planet that's sunny or windy, but also some hydro dams that can be tapped or not depending on market conditions.
Another angle: storing and transmitting money is way easier than storing and transmitting energy. A network of grids that includes some demands that can be time-shifted (some industry, some kinds of warehouse-level refrigeration, some pumping workloads, etc.) would also help. Big
Change of expectations (Score:2)
When peoples' expectations around power delivery have finally adjusted to be like they have become for phones and web sites, all of those pesky barriers can go away. We just need to follow the Apple playbook and train them with something shiny attached to a stick.
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Whoosh!
Short answer: No (Score:2)
Just look at EVs, and the number of connectors/norms that exist to charge them. What sped up EVs is not open-source it's Tesla and the fact that they proposed something people wanted for a affordable (at least for the target population) price: long range, style, brand-recognition, bragging rights because owning a Tesla was cool.
The important parts of Tesla are not relying on open-source: proprietary connectors, proprietary battery designs non-repairable, cannot service your car outside of Tesla dealership..
Re:Short answer: No (Score:4, Insightful)
What made Tesla was not being proprietary, it was building infrastructure. The proprietaryness was largely irrelevant until recently, because nobody else was building EVs in any significant numbers. NOW it's important, because everyone else is doing it, and all of them are better at building chassis than Tesla.
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Funny you should mention it. Years ago Tesla announced they would freely license a lot of their patents [slashdot.org], including things related to their charging tech. It didn't exactly catch on, unfortunately. But now we have an announcement from Ford that their EVs will be able to access Tesla superchargers [theverge.com] - first in early 2024 with an adapter and, starting in the 2025 model year, nat
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Years ago Tesla announced they would freely license a lot of their patents
That was a lie. They were willing to license their patents for no money, but you effectively had to enter into a cross-licensing agreement with terms which unfairly benefit Tesla. What their page actually says is:
What does "in good faith" mean? This:
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The situation in Europe is much better. Nissan and Renault built the first charging networks, and they used the established standards - CCS and CHAdeMO.
Later Tesla came along with proprietary chargers, but we're forced to add CCS by the EU. CCS is faster than the Tesla proprietary system, and supports 800V vehicles. Competition pushed the technology along.
Now many Tesla chargers are open to all vehicles, because they are using the standard connector. They aren't the cheapest, but it's nice to have the optio
I hope there's hardware safety mechanisms in place (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyone that has taken an introduction to engineering course likely heard of the Therac-25. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Open source software is supposed to speed the development process by allowing more people to experiment with the code. That's fine when the code is dealing with fairly trivial matters like word processing, animations, 3D modeling, and so much else that is just bits and bytes that are easily restored from a backup if anything fails. Put this same model in control of an electrical gri
Re:I hope there's hardware safety mechanisms in pl (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody is suggesting you use open source software to irradiate your tumour.
The kind of software they are talking about is things like monitoring and load switching. Lots of people are doing it already. A bit of software takes readings from a solar inverter and BMS, and when clean energy is abundant it switches on things like storage heaters, AC, car chargers etc.
The idea is to use as much of that energy as possible. Things like storage heaters and turning the AC thermostat down a degree allow energy to be stored for later.
Energy saving measures are possible too, like motorised blinds and shutters on windows. Quality of life features include monitoring indoor CO2 levels and running fans when needed.
It would suck if you had to use proprietary software for all that. You would need to buy everything from the same vendor, who would abandon you in a few years.
For micro grids the worst that could happen is having to import energy from the grid because the software didn't manage demand properly, or your house reaches an uncomfortable temperature, or you car doesn't get charged. All the sub-systems are individually safe, the risk is only higher than necessary cost and inconvenience.
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Anyone that has taken an introduction to engineering course likely heard of the Therac-25. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]
Believe it or not I heard about it when it happened and found out why over a decade later in school.
It has nothing to do with your point.