Microbursts and Mircrogrids
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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://microgridknowledge.com/microgrids-businesses-institutions/ https://www.eiuperspectives.economist.com/sites/default/files/Power%20Up.pdf |
Your blog author was recently involved in a power outage. An overnight 
Re-Volting
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I enjoy blogging about the intersection of project management and sustainability, and sometimes people think this is ‘only’ about project management applied to ‘green’ projects, like building a wind farm or saving a species. To illustrate this, when we published our Cleland Award-winning book, Green Project Management back in 2010, the book covers submitted to us all had themes of daisies, windmills, and solar panels, as if to say, the intersection of PM and sustainability is about doing projects which save energy or whales. While many (perhaps most) of my posts are more about taking a long-term view as a project manager, and integrating sustainable thinking into project decisions, this particular one happens to be one of those posts that is indeed about that ‘pure’ intersection – so feel free to imagine daisies, windmills, solar panels, and (in this case) voltage optimization. What is voltage optimization? It’s a sort of re-volting (if you will) the power supply to a facility – especially one that uses a lot of electrical power. One vendor that makes products that do this is Powerstar, and it’s from their web page that I adapt this explanation of how voltage optimization works: Power from the energy supplier is supplied at a higher voltage than necessary due to old electrical distribution networks in place which were designed to operate at higher voltage levels, as well as electricity suppliers being required to ensure all buildings are supplied voltage within set parameters. If a building is being supplied at a higher voltage than necessary it will likely result in a mass of wasted energy, excessive levels of carbon emissions, and higher than necessary electricity bills in addition to power quality issues, including increased wear and reduced lifespan of electrical equipment. We’re talking about motors and fans and any other electrical equipment lasting longer – a reduction in waste in and of itself. In addition to reducing energy consumption, cutting carbon emissions and providing savings on electricity bills, voltage optimization can also improve power quality by balancing phase voltages and filtering harmonics and transients from the network operators supply. Voltage optimization technologies are typically installed in series between the distribution transformer and the main low voltage distribution board, allowing all of the consumer’s electrical equipment to benefit from an optimized power supply. And here is a more detailed description, for those of you who are just a little more science-minded: http://www.explainthatstuff.com/voltage-optimisation.html Does this voltage optimization technique work? Well, a recent story from excellent sustainability resource edie.net gives an example of a Spanish cheese company that saved 98,000kWh annually after installing such a system. But this cheesy example is by no means an exception. In just a few moments of research I found examples of such levels of savings in government buildings, trailer parks, burger restaurants, Air Force bases – all sorts of enterprises. Here’s a video that shows how Paragon Foods, for example, achieved savings and reductions of its carbon footprint. Powerstar is not the only player in this business. Here’s a site that shows some of the other top players. And yes, I did mention an Air Force base, it happens to be a Royal Air Force (RAF) base, and here is an example of a PowerPerfector® deployment. Case Study from PowerPerfector – RAF Does this really work? It sounds a bit too good to be true, but it does work. See this study, written up by the Environmental Defense Fund’s blog: A study by Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd) looking at this technology’s potential within Chicago and northern Illinois found it could reduce the need for almost 2,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity (enough to power 180,000 homes) each year at an amazingly low cost of less than two cents per kilowatt-hour – more than is achieved now from the utility’s other efficiency programs. This translates to $240 million per year in savings for ComEd’s customers, of which 90 percent could potentially benefit. The study also suggested full deployment of voltage optimization would only take about five years. And the connection to project management? Well that should be obvious. Each of these deployments of a voltage optimization system is – you guessed it – a project. Here's a visual to accentuate this point: Here is (from Powerstar) their project management process:
Now, I would argue that the project management element of this chart should be at the hub, overseeing the whole process, but that is a blog post for another day…
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