Microbursts and Mircrogrids

 

Your blog author was recently involved in a power outage.  An overnight microburst with winds at 100 mph and higher took down a large double oak tree, which narrowly missed the house, but did end up taking down the power lines for the entire neighborhood.  The only sounds the next morning were chainsaws and the constant hum of a neighbor’s generator.  The generator-empowered neighbor offered to ‘power us all up’ and even set up a charging table for people to recharge their laptops and mobile phones.

In a way, what they did (besides demonstrating outstanding neighborly behavior) was to establish a microgrid – a small, independent area capable of providing its own power without the existing electric infrastructure.   We lost power for a week and this was a problem for us - but it's nothing compared to what many in the world live every day. This post is about the ways in which microgrid projects may make a difference in the struggle to increase the use of renewable energy, and to “power up” parts of the world (such as in Africa or currently in Puerto Rico) where not having power is not a mere inconvenience, but a matter of moment-to-moment life and death, as well as allowing economic development to advance.

From the US Department of Energy, a microgrid is a local energy grid with control capability, which means it can disconnect from the traditional grid and operate autonomously. To understand how a microgrid works, first understand the grid. The grid connects homes, businesses and other buildings to central power sources, which allow us to use appliances, heating/cooling systems and electronics. But this interconnectedness means that when part of the grid needs to be repaired, everyone is affected.  This is where a microgrid can help. A microgrid generally operates while connected to the grid, but importantly, it can break off and operate on its own using local energy generation in times of crisis like storms or power outages, or for other reasons.

A microgrid can be powered by distributed generators, batteries, and/or renewable resources like solar panels. Depending on how it’s fueled and how its requirements are managed, a microgrid might run indefinitely.

A recent article on this topic intrigued me, and then (perhaps because I was super-attentive to the topic) I found a flurry of recent stories about the increasing applicability of microgrids, for a wide variety of deployments and reasons.  This one caught my attention because it centers on Pittsburgh – the city singled out by US President Trump when he announced that he was exiting the Paris Climate Agreement (and is now the leader of the only country not in that agreement).  'I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris', said President Trump.  The mayor of Pittsburgh, Bill Peduto, said in return, ‘We stand with the world, and will follow the agreement’.  That little interchange already had me focused on Pittsburgh just a little more than other cities.

From the article:

Usually, power grids rely on a far-flung network. For example, a person making toast might be drawing electricity from miles away. A microgrid is a local, independent power grid that can run without electricity from the main network.

A pilot site for microgrids is at the Pitt Ohio trucking company in nearby Harmar, Pa. Jim Maug, director of building maintenance, eagerly showed a reporter the building's green credentials last month. A wind turbine twisted near the parking lot. Solar panels tiled the roof. And in the truck bay, electric forklifts ran on batteries fueled by the renewable power.

"We're anticipating about a seven to eight-year return on investment," said Maug. The project cost about $325,000, he added.

Of course it’s not just the clearly tangible ROI that Pitt Ohio gets as a benefit.  They also have the ability to continue operations during outages, independent of the main grid.

That’s a nice-to-have.  For parts of the world, this is a must-have.  In a recent Economist magazine Special Report on Africa, there’s a segment called “Good night, gloom” which is quite eye-opening.

It starts with (excuse the pun) a jolt.

Of all the measures of (Africa’s) poverty, few are starker than that about two-thirds of its people have no access to reliable electricity.

That’s 620 million people with no access to electricity, most of them in villages and on farms.  This is not a convenience issue.  This costs lives.

In Nigeria each year an estimated 36,000 women die during pregnancy or childbirth, many because they deliver their babies in the dark in clinics such as the one in Makoko, a slum perched on stilts above a lagoon in Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest commercial city.

The article goes on to more optimistic news, luckily.  Africa has been adding renewable power via thousands of projects, at an amazing rate.  The problem (just look at a map of Africa) is geography (see map below).

…generating power is useful only if it can be sent to where it is needed, and in many parts of Africa electricity grids seldom stretch beyond big cities. Adding a house to the grid even in a compact country such as Rwanda typically costs about $2,000, which is more than the country’s average annual income per person. The APP reckons that expanding grid power across Africa to reach almost everyone would cost $63bn a year until 2030, compared with the $8bn a year that is being spent now.

So the answer, much like in Pittsburgh, is microgrids (called minigrids in the article).

Increasingly, projects are being launched to power these remote villages and farm areas with microgrids.  According to the article,

 a study by the Rockefeller Foundation in India found that when minigrids were installed in villages, small businesses increased their sales by 13% and incomes rose across the area. “If you want to drive the productive use of electricity and move people up the economic ladder, then you need a minigrid,” says Deepali Khanna of the Rockefeller Foundation. The Smart Villages Initiative, which has brought together scientists from Cambridge and Oxford Universities to get minigrids adopted more widely in poor countries, found that once smallholder farmers have electricity, they quickly adopt a range of other technologies such as irrigation pumps and smartphones to get long-term weather forecasts. “You then soon find support industries springing up to feed this higher level of economic activity in the villages, together with a general increase in well-being,” says John Holmes, a co-leader of the initiative.

However, to get this done, it’s going to take projects, project management capability, and project managers.  Have a look through this document (Click on the image below – or here to download it for free).  In it you see the need for projects of which I speak:

To achieve universal electricity access by 2030, the current pace of expansion will have to double. It is estimated that off-grid solutions will supply 50-60% of the additional generation needed to achieve universal electricity access by 2030.

It’s important work and project managers will play a key role.  I provide the following links if I have piqued your interest even a micro-amount.

https://www.npr.org/2017/11/12/563276003/pittsburghs-microgrids-technology-could-lead-the-way-for-green-energy

https://microgridknowledge.com/microgrids-businesses-institutions/

https://www.eiuperspectives.economist.com/sites/default/files/Power%20Up.pdf

https://download.schneider-electric.com/files?p_enDocType=White+Paper&p_File_Id=6794200773&p_File_Name=998-2095-03-10-17AR0_EN.pdf&p_Reference=998-2095-03-10-17AR0_EN