Heat waves in Australia and ice storms in the US have caused recent wide spread blackouts to millions of customers dependent on the centralized grid system, seven hundred thousand in Kentucky. Despite occurring on opposite hemispheres and under opposite temperature extremes the recovery efforts leave rural residents last on the priority list. This despite centralized power plants located in rural areas and out of the view of urban settings.
Contained in the new $819B stimulus package is as much as $21B to upgrade the electrical grid and $2.4B to build carbon-sequestering power plants. Grid failures cost lives and according to the Electric Power Research Institute cost the economy, in particular, the digital and industrial markets, up to $188B annually. Obviously, an upgrade is long overdue and the lack of it has been very, very costly.
In order to fully upgrade, advance and improve electrical quality and supply any new grid, smart or otherwise will have to implement wide ranging distributed energy sources. Distributed energy is energy produced at or near the point of consumption and is widely used in micro-grids and the new concept smart grid technology.
Smart grids have the potential to cut back on the duration of massive power outages by immediately pinpointing the location of a grid failure. Smart grids may also improve efficiency, the Department of Energy estimates, “If the grid were just 5% more efficient, the energy savings would equate to permanently eliminating the fuel and greenhouse gas emissions from 53 million cars.â€
Most micro-grids are already smart grids monitoring and matching load levels while avoiding the typical losses associated with long distance transmission. The DOE states more dollars can stay local when not being used to ‘pay the freight’ for inefficient transmission and operation. The report addresses distributed energy but still focuses on the current centralized paradigm.
This strategy is also prevalent with the Western Governors Association’s who “…are encouraging the cooperative development of the new transmission lines in the West needed to develop the region’s vast renewable energy resources.†Nevertheless there are macro-trends driving the move toward micro-grids that include security, military bases are moving toward micro-grids, quality, the digital age requires conditioned, clean power and federal standards are finally being set for distributed generators.
Micro-grids are gaining strides around the globe and The European Commission has co-funded micro-grid demonstration sites in several different countries. Even Walmart has gotten into the act and installed two micro-grids in Texas and Colorado.
For financially strapped rural counties such as the Southern Oregon Coast, reinvesting money that would be spent on electric bills anyway on distributed power generation can show returns in as little as five years. Energy independence can improve the quality of life even when the centralized electrical grid is operating by keeping dollars local. In the event of a major power outage it can insulate the usually forsaken rural dwellers from the days and sometimes weeks of blackouts.
