[Editor's Note: As managing principal of Smart Buildings, Jim Sinopoli discusses the benefits of using a microgrid to generate power.]
Centralized power plants have been around since the 1880s. More than a century later, we’re starting to see growth of microgrids -- decentralized or distributed generation of power at individual buildings, primarily through renewable sources such as solar panels or wind turbines. With microgrids, real estate developers, building owners or the local community builds the power grid for their large development, industrial park, campus or even an entire neighborhood. No longer just a new concept, microgrids have moved beyond the pilot phase – they are now.commercialized with roughly 300 microgrids operational worldwide.
Overview
Within a microgrid are small power generators such as traditional fossil fuel generators, photovoltaic, wind and fuel cells. Different sources of power generation improve the microgrid’s reliability. The microgrid may be able to operate independently (such as in remote villages or military bases) or it could be connected to a larger utility power grid, in which case the microgrid then appears as one customer to the larger grid. The organization and management of the microgrid could be a cooperative arrangement for a community, coordinated by developers, or it may just be a large campus with one owner.
Microgrids improve the reliability of the older grid and the overall power system as well. Locally generated power lessens the burden on centralized generation and related transmission and distribution systems. Energy losses in the transmission process, which are significant in the larger grid, are negligible with a microgrid.
Potential Benefits
Microgrids will soon be a reality for each of us involved with designing, constructing, operating and managing buildings. So why would a developer or building owner be interested in a microgrid? Here are some compelling reasons:
· The microgrid improves power reliability. A microgrid with multiple generation sources provides diversity and therefore greater reliability. Connecting a microgrid to the larger grid simply means increased power dependability.
· The microgrid has more potential to lower energy costs. While it’s true that centralized power plants produce cheap power, there are opportunities to lower costs further with a microgrid. For example, if a microgrid is connected to the larger grid, the operator can use power from that grid when prices are cheaper than the microgrid. Conversely, the operator can maximize the use of the microgrid when prices from the larger grid are high. Given variables such as time-of-day rates, demand charges, weather, potential demand response events and load shedding scenarios, some analytics can be used in order to optimize when to use the larger grid or the microgrid. This will eventually minimize the cost of energy or could even facilitate making money by selling power into the larger grid. Owning a microgrid offers more flexibility for the owners in managing their energy costs.
· The microgrid is energy efficient. A typical coal-fired power plant might only be around 38 percent efficient, meaning 62 percent of the original energy is not converted to electricity. Add to that another 7 percent loss in transmission and distribution. A microgrid with multiple generation sources is likely to be more efficient through renewable sources, eliminate the transmission and distribution energy losses and have the capability to recover and use heat locally. The result is higher energy efficiency and lower carbon production.
A recent study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory looked at a microgrid in Canada with 10MW peak load and a 6.2 MW average load. The study, called A Framework for the Evaluation of the Cost and Benefits of Microgrids, found the average cost of electricity for customers via the microgrid to be $5 less per MWh. The load reduction provided benefits to the grid operator related to investment deferral, which means a utility company can defer or doesn’t need to make a capital investment in generation, infrastructure and land. There were also substantial gains to society related to reduction of GHGs. Finally, the study monetized benefits related to increased power reliability that accrued primarily for customers, but also the microgrid operator and the larger grid.
The take-away from this study is that while most gains from microgrids are related to the customer, everyone benefits.
"Europe's Green Energy
"Europe's Green Energy Suicide
If it's cheap and plentiful—even low in carbon-dioxide emissions—much of the continent wants no part of it.
By RAEL JEAN ISAAC
As austerity bites into European living standards, sparking revolt at the polls, "growth" has become the politician's mantra. But to be competitive, European countries require a secure, plentiful and competitively priced energy supply. Unless Europe radically rethinks its obsession with carbon-dioxide emissions and the anti-fossil fuel energy policies that flow from it, growth is likely to remain elusive.
European Union law mandates that the 27 member countries on average cut their C02 emissions 20% by 2020, compared to 1990 levels. The goal after that is to cut emissions by between 80% and 95% by 2050. In May 2010, a study by the European Commission's energy department estimated the 20% cut would cost 48 billion euros ($66.3 billion) a year. The Commission's draft Energy Roadmap for 2050 is frank: "There is a trade-off between climate change policies and competitiveness."
There is indeed. The consultancy Verso Economics has calculated the opportunity cost of the United Kingdom's subsidy system for renewables to be 10,000 jobs between 2009 and 2010 alone. A report by the Energy Intensive Users Group (which represents energy-intensive British businesses) and the Trades Union Congress cited steel making, ceramics, paper, cement and lime manufacture, aluminum and basic inorganic chemicals as industries facing up to 141% in additional energy costs by 2020 as a result of C02 emissions-reduction schemes. EIUG Director Jeremy Nicholson notes that "the current policies do seem to be angled towards creating a market for overseas competitors."
Emissions-free solar and wind energy, on which the U.K. plans increasingly to rely, are expensive. The government estimates that a planned offshore wind farm project ringing the coast will cost £140 billion, or £5,600 ($8,972) for every household in the country. Conventional energy could provide the same amount of energy at 5% of the cost.
The U.K.'s Department of Energy and Climate Change commissioned a report (led by Prof. John Hills of the London School of Economics) to examine the issue of "fuel poverty," defined as when fuel bills take up more than 10% of household income. It found four million of England's 21.5 million households fall in this category and the number could rise to 9.2 million by 2016, equivalent to 43% of all homes in England. One of the key factors are green taxes and levies expected to add up to £200 ($306) to bills by 2020.
Spain's experience with subsidizing renewables has been painful. A 2009 study at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos found subsidies required 3.45% of all of Spain's household income tax revenues and had led to a loss of 110,500 jobs. An April 2010 internal assessment by the former Zapatero government was equally bleak. It noted that the price of electricity determined the competitiveness of Spanish industry, and the price had risen to 17% above the European average. The chief reason: government subsidies for renewables, which had increased fivefold between 2004 and 2010.
While Spain has sought to lance its solar investment bubble, others are proceeding with poorly conceived schemes. Denmark already has the highest energy prices in Europe. Yet the recently elected Danish government raised its C02 reduction target to 40% by 2020 and has set a goal of completely phasing out fossil fuels by 2050.
Italy's subsidy system sets the price floor for wind energy at three times the market level. A study at Italy's Instituto Bruno Leoni found the capital necessary to create one green job could have created 6.9 jobs if invested in industry.
Even Germany, Europe's healthiest economy, may be in for some rude surprises. Germany's Renewable Energy Feed-in Act of 2000 requires electric utilities to buy renewables from all producers at fixed, exorbitant rates and feed it into the power grid for 20 years. A German utility executive has observed that solar energy in Germany makes as much sense as growing pineapples in Alaska. Despite this, Germany now has half the world's solar photovoltaic capacity.
Fritz Vahrenholt, the departing head of the renewable energy arm of RWE Innogy and a former hero of the German environmental movement, now says: "We're destroying the foundations of our prosperity. In the end what we are doing is putting the German automotive sector at risk, the steel, copper and chemical sectors, silicon, you name it."
France, because of its heavy reliance on nuclear power, has no emissions problem. But new President Francois Hollande has promised to cut nuclear energy by a third. His defeated Socialist rival, Maxine Aubry, had promised to eliminate nuclear altogether.
If the energy source is cheap and plentiful—even low in C02 emissions—much of Europe wants no part of it. Although Europe has huge shale gas resources, Germany has imposed a moratorium on shale-gas exploration, which France already forbids by law.
Evidence mounts daily that man-made global warming is a phony apocalypse, but its effect in depressing living standards is all too real.
Ms. Isaac's most recent book is "Roosters of the Apocalypse: How the Junk Science of Global Warming Almost Bankrupted the Western World" (Heartland Institute, 2012)."
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Convergence of energy and
Convergence of energy and information, each building, neighbourhood, community is generating their own electricity and sharing it lateraly. Network of collaborative, open and distributed energy - new currency. How is the idea being off the grid fitting to this? Are we talking about two different things? Please, explain it to me?