Microgrids May Provide Distributed Energy

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."

Comments

Re:This would be cool

[ergo98]

If this sort of grid system gets implemented, it may be incentive for me and others to go ahead with local power generation systems so that we can share.

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 (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).

Re:Actually...

[jcr]

The utilities will never allow it.

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