Sandy -- yet another major storm to wreak havoc with the utility grid infrastructure on the U.S. East Coast – underscores a compelling reality: the status quo is no longer acceptable in today’s hyper-digitalized economy.
Consider this: The U.S. utility grid was graded a lowly D+ by the American Council of Civil Engineers in 2009. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) statistics show that 80 precent to 90 precent of all grid failures begin at the distribution level of electricity service. The U.S. average outage duration is 120 minutes annually and that number is getting worse while the rest of the industrialized world is less than 10 minutes and getting better.
What’s worse, recent evidence corroborates more severe weather is now business-as-usual. According to the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, 100 million to 200 million people were affected by weather-related disasters between 1980 and 2009, with economic losses ranging from $50 billion to $100 billion annually.
What’s the answer, if one takes a big step back and takes stock of macro-trends driving business to link higher notions of sustainability with on-the-ground practicality? Enter the microgrid to the rescue.
Microgrids are really just miniature versions of the larger utility grid except for one defining feature: when necessary, they can disconnect from the macro-grid and can continue to operate in what is known as "island mode." Because of this distinguishing feature, microgrids can offer a higher degree of reliability for facilities such as military bases, hospitals and data centers, which all have "mission critical" functions that need to continue to operate no matter what.
Next page: The business case for microgrids
More like the American power
More like the American power grid has been designed and is run by a bunch of idiots!
Firstly, let me use Tokyo as an example, during its massive earthquake in 2011 barely any parts lost power, it was only areas mainly hit by the tsunami which is of course expected in that kind of disaster. Residents in Japan spend an average of 5 minutes per year without power compared to over 250 minutes per year in the USA, yet Japan is subject to large earthquakes, typhoons as well as power shortages. How about where I live in Melbourne, Australia. Ive only had 1 outage in the last 2 years and that only lasted an hour (due to a storm). Does this say something to you?
The only countries that ive noticed to have large scale failures are either developing countries such as India and Africa or the USA.
I mean come on, how the hell does a tree touching a power line cause the entire city of New York to loose power in 2003? Here there are at least 8+ transmission lines supplying Melbourne, not to mention that during severe bushfires in 2009 at least 4 of these lines were tripped without major failures and that was also on a record demand day.
Blaming the grid is a poor excuse to the idiotic and poor managment of the power assets in the USA. Anyway Microgrids afterall are suitable for the poor areas of Africa and India, having a good and reliable grid is often a sign of a strong and wealthy economy.