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Microgrids May Provide Distributed Energy
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Sep 25, 2005 03:14 PM
from the will-the-riaa-object dept.
from the will-the-riaa-object dept.
jobcello wrote to mention a BBC article discussing a new technique for power distribution that might provide electricity using a series of small "microgrids", in a manner similar to peer-to-peer software. From the article: "'This would save something like 20 to 30% of our emissions with hardly anyone knowing it ... A microgrid is a collection of small generators for a collection of users in close proximity ... It supplies heat through the household, but you already have cables in the ground, so it is easy to construct an electricity network. Then you create some sort of control network.' That network could be made into a smart grid using more sophisticated software and grid computing technologies."
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..but... (Score:4, Funny)
Actually... (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Actually... (Score:5, Informative)
They may fight it, but allowing it isn't up to them. Ever since Travis Price won his first lawsuit against Con Ed over the windmill in New York that was driving his power meter backwards, the utilities have been on the defensive.
-jcr
Parent
controller softwared exists (Score:5, Funny)
from the post:
I believe if you'll check the documentation, that sophisticated smart-grid controller software is part of the new Office 12 release.
Re:controller softwared exists (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:controller softwared exists (Score:5, Funny)
Clippy: It looks like you're trying to create a microgrid control network.
Clippy: Overload Generators?
Parent
What if... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What if... (Score:2)
Great, just what we need (Score:5, Funny)
And you can bet on countless participants finding ways to not share at a 1:1 ratio, just like on most P2P networks...
Re:Great, just what we need (Score:2)
Possibly, although probably it wouldn't be as much of a problem since most people have finite electricity needs (e.g. once your air conditioner is running, you don't get any additional benefit from turning on a second air conditioner, or a third. Contrast that with p2p, where doubling your bandwidth will always decrease your download time).
In any case, didn't BitTorrent largely solve the "fre
wow, they have it all worked out! (Score:2, Interesting)
What sort, exactly; and, will it run Linux?
* * *
Why do sentences like that stick out and yell "inexperienced ding-dongs at work" ??
Re:wow, they have it all worked out! (Score:2, Funny)
will it run Linux?
More importantly, will it run Linux powered solely by dead cats?
This would be cool (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This would be cool (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps I'm just totally misunderstanding the article (it seems to talk alternately about electricity, and then about heat, and then about electricity. While they can be converted back and forth with varying efficiency, it did seem confusing), but if you are generating more power than you use, in most areas (at least here in North America) you absolutely can push the power onto the grid [energyvortex.com] (which is a lot of intermeshed small grids), getting paid for your generation (or alternately offsetting your consumption used when there is no wind/sun/uranium/whatever). Several jobs ago I worked at a shop that installed control software for generators, and several of the customers used them as mini-generating stations, pushing lots of power onto the neighbouring grid (and thus eliminating the transmission losses).
Parent
Best bang for the buck... (Score:4, Informative)
Even with the price gouging that goes on in the home power industry, though, you can still make solar hot water pay back in a few short years... and of course solar air daytime space heating is extremely cheap since DIY is for some weird reason the only real option available. Horizontal geothermal heat/cool banking ("slinky coils") can self-finance on a home equity loan with their power savings, if you are in the right climate... best to have a pro do a site survey before trying to crunch the numbers on a heat pump system, though.
It's astounding how much of the electricity and fuel we use is just turned straight to heat (or cold), and since heat/cold is much easier to collect/store than electricity, that's where the savings are to be had.
(Though a space heater that ran the current through a massive BOINC parrallel computing array might be an interesting way to avoid "wasting" electricity when heating with it.)
Parent
Re:This would be cool (Score:2)
However, it would be cool if as new homes are built many are built with the investment already made, so that homeowners see it as a
Electrical and Communications grids behind the tim (Score:3, Interesting)
DG and you (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:DG and you (Score:2, Informative)
Slightly Related - Fuel Cell Tech (Score:3, Interesting)
In either case it would allow for what I believe is the greatest hinderance to this technology, true energy competition.
Think about it, your energy costs would be completely independent of where you live (except for shipping costs). We could build clean energy supply stations where they will be most effective (say the desert for example) and then contain and ship that energy anywhere using fuel cells.
There are a few hurdles to overcome such as local power monopolies and putting protections in place to make sure 1st world countries aren't just importing from poluting energy sources in 3rd world countries.
But when the technology becomes marketable, this will be a real possibility.
Ceramic Fuel Cells (Score:2, Informative)
Natural gas + O2 = electriicity + high temp waste heat that can heat your water.
Big companies (Score:3, Insightful)
People supplying energy for the people? Big electric companies will never allow it.
--
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Powergen in the UK are already selling microCHP (Score:2)
http://www.powergen.co.uk/pub/Dom/A/ui/Residentia
They don't care, they're selling you the fuel anyway.
Re:Big companies (Score:2, Informative)
Sometimes crown (government) corporations can do good things!
Been there, got that (Score:3, Interesting)
...what about the guy down the block? (Score:2, Insightful)
1) how much more/less will this cost?
2) is this going to affect, say, the data center that houses 300+ servers, and the guy down the block's electronics? who says the data center can afford the drop in power when he goes to turn on a few high-power units?
3) wouldn't this just make it that much easier for power to be cut as a whole?
Re:...what about the guy down the block? (Score:3, Insightful)
Assume that in most places, the existing electricity grid will be used to shuffle power around the neighborhood -- and to allow access to the big-boy power generators who pick up the slack when the microgrids are net consumers. Many states allow individuals to sell power back into the grid. Some even require that the "price" paid for such power is the same retail that the small customer pays, so accounting is simply a matter of spinning the meter backwards. Most of those states, however, r
Connecting small generators... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Connecting small generators... (Score:4, Informative)
The technical term is "Grid interactive inverter" - google it.
Parent
Skeptical eyebrow raise... (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems somewhat far-fetched to me.
From what I remember of physics in highschool, the production and transport of electricity is much more efficient when it is done in high volume with high voltages. In a small grid, you'd lose the benefits of that efficiency. It would also require separate maintenance crews, hardware, etc.
It would also raise concerns about standardization. Will the product I just purchased work on a grid down the street? Would you have to replace your appliances when you moved? The biggest benefit of consolitation is, imo, that you don't have to ask these questions. The systems are large enough to span areas well beyond the majority of general user's environments and thus there are few, if any compatability issues (i.e. Currently, if you leave the country, you might need to change your plug type / voltage, but anywhere in the country it should be the same).
Interruption also raises an issue. I'm inclined to think that a larger factility is easier to keep in operation because it's consolidated and more easily accessed by technicians / engineers / etc.
There are some benefits.
Solar power is made feasible, at least partially, in this case. I've always wondered why we don't all just have solar panels on our houses and batteries in the basements. I suppose that living in Southern California gives me a bit of a bias in terms of estimating the feasibility of such a system, but it certainly seems more reasonable than burning copious amounts of fossil fuels.
There are also other "alternative" power sources listed in the article, although it seems to me that large-scale, consolidated power production is still superior, given that the production facilities are clean.
Having grids separated increases security of those facilities in a disaster as there is no single facility whose compromise would cause a power loss to an entire large grid. With small grids, even if your grid goes down, surrounding grids should still be operational. That does, however, raise concerns about maintenance and repair--who's doing it and when?
Why not nuclear?
Nuclear energy is some of the cleanest and most efficient energy production available. Even with the waste being very toxic, its concentration levels are high. It is arguably easier to control the pollution from nuclear by-products than from a coal power plant. In a well-maintained and operated plant, there is virtually no risk of a meltdown, and I'm sure modern technology can be used to further increase the safety of nuclear power.
Chernobyl is the bloody poster-child of anti-nuclear groups, but that's certainly not par for the course in terms of nuclear power. San Onofre [sce.com] is down here in SoCal, and I dare say we have any mutated sea bass or deathclaw walking around. ;)
My vote is for nuclear, hydroelectic, and other efficient, clean, large-scale power sources, or for solar panels on my roof. It'll be interesting to see how this issue plays out.
Re:Skeptical eyebrow raise... (Score:2)
We're not talking about new grids, new wires. Sure, the 'Highway' electrical distribution is the most efficient per mile, but it still has to get to your house. The 'last mile' is still there, we're just talking about ma
buckminster fuller (Score:2)
hope it's 'open' (Score:2, Interesting)
Sort of (Score:3, Funny)
Distributed vs Centralized (Score:3, Interesting)
I keep hearing that 1 large electric plant is better to power transportation than a million tiny gasoline powered generators. In fact, I hear that in here quite regularly.
Why the dichotomy?
Reliability of an electric network? Ha! (Score:3, Funny)
Will never happen (Score:3, Interesting)
Nice idea - I have heard that transmission takes about 20-30% of our electrical output (especially when California gets its electricity from the Northern Oregon border, if not even farther away) - so anything to move the generation plant closer to the people that actually use the electricity would be a huge benefit.
Economies of Scale (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought the reason we built big power plants was that:
1: By putting all your eggs in one basket and Watching That Basket, reliability was increased.
2: Many small generators would cost more and not be as efficient as one big generator, even allowing for larger transmission line losses.
Just imagine... (Score:2)
what about warm climates? (Score:2)
Sounds interesting, but the idea in the article seems to be moving electric generation to houses so that they can take advantage of the waste heat that electric generation always entails. Problem is, where I live, it's 104F (40C) outside today (September 25). So tell me again why I'd want waste heat?
Around here, the peak power usage is in the summer, at which time this technology would do more harm than good. Power plants have to be built to handle the peak power usage, so the electric company would ha
Just call it a RAIG.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, that seems to be the key here. You will need controllers to synchronize all the generation, but once you do that, then each generator is just like the disks in a RAID array. They can be inexpensive and not super reliable, thereby reducing costs.
The efficiency issues I believe are being overemphasized. Yes, you want high voltage for long distances. But the wh
50-odd comments... (Score:2, Funny)
Indeed, microgrids aren't efficient (Score:4, Interesting)
We could use high temperature superconductors, fission reactors and with fusion later when they get it to work, and a lot of clearing of the way by the federal government for deployment which is now held up by people using the environment as a smokescreen when what it comes down to is a lot of NIMBY and more to the point a bountiful opportunity for pitiful and pathetic unimportant people to make themselves feel important.
I live in a state where every highway project takes years longer and millions more because the enviros hold up everything *after* the damage is already done until they've milked out the publicity for themselves and finally it gets done in the end and there was no change and nothing saved in terms of environment and plenty of time and money wasted. All for their inane ego festivals.
Right now those same imbeciles are doing everything they can to keep the power transmission companies from fixing outdated and antiquated transmission lines and equipment which first keeps efficiency low and cost of the power transmission high, second it keeps jacking up the danger of massive local outages every year, third it increases the danger to the workers who maintain the system, fourth it increases the chance of creating a regional chain reaction outage, and fifth it increases the chance of a catastrophic failure on one of the big circuits going through the woods and starting a fire.
They are also trying everything they can do to prevent us from tying into regional grids through the west side of CT into New York and across the sound to Long Island. And lastly doing all they can to stand in the way of a gas tanker and pipeline facility. The sanity of putting liquid natural gas ships more than ten miles offshore is obvious in this new age of mega-terrorism and conversely the insanity of making the tankers put into ports near population centers equally obvious. They just don't care. It's all about them.
The best thing we can do with our end of things as consumers is insulate, make efficient use of what we consumer, and use solar electric, thermal, and hydro *where* economical and efficient on our homes. When superconductive storage systems finally come around, we can store the energy compactly that way onsite and until then, unless we want to deal with the danger of poisonous battery chemicals and five thousand pounds of them per home, we're better off simply having a system where we use the energy we generate first and the main grid's power secondly.
But generators aren't going to cut it. We're going from a few hundred stations to a few million and with less efficiency and more pollution and no inspection. Tack on inspection and you can add the psycho enviro leftists to the far right terrorist under every bed paranoids as one more group pushing us closer to a police state; no way would they let fossil fuel generators increase like that without mandating mandatory inspections on your property at any time for any or no reason with no prior notice and reserve the right to shut you down whenever they felt like it.
I don't see a need to create a massive new intrusion on our rights. Like I said, insulate, make efficient use, be efficient in generation where it is fitting to generate it yourself.
Fittingly a lot of the enviros of today were the Mother Earth News types of twenty-five years ago advocating that we all use wood and coal stoves, forge and smelt our own metals, and operate pig farms to feed methane stills. Their former zeal for old low tech is utterly incompatible with their stated beliefs of today. Much like the pictures of them in mullets, gold chains, and neon orange leisure suits were twenty-five years ago.
Mother Earth News types of yesteryear (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually the Mother Earth News types of 25 years ago where exactly the same as they were now: hypocrites who didn't realize that their actions where hypocritical. They were always in favor of pollution restrictions on everything, and being self sufficient on your own wood heat. Both at once.
I remember (Just before the original mother went out of business) their shock when they realized that their efforts to prevent pollution had reached the point where their beloved woodstove was no illegal to make.
In otherwords they were like everyone else. I want to make the world a better place, so long as it doesn't effect me in any way. (Think greenpeace bumpersticker on a SUV)
Parent
May not work as well in the U.S. (Score:4, Informative)
But in the States, a pole-mounted transformer may serve only two or threee homes. Here, the technical issues resulting from bridging multiple transformers might make the prospect of a neighborhood-wide grid less economically feasible.
Already In Use (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Lightning (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Another Zonk dupe! (Score:3, Insightful)
What the... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you refuse, then stop trying to force other drink your special Kool Aids; we don't need idiots who chant the same PR for every story.
Parent
Re: BitTorrent Creator (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, BitTorrent was created by Bram Cohen (not Brian). You can find his website here [bitconjurer.org].