How a Microgrid Works
by Robert Lamb
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/microgrid.htm
Might be cheaper to buy a few Generators.
Wouldn't be simpler to trim the trees?
“The rural community is filled with trees and wires. “
How about cutting some trees down?
When I worked for a local utility and we attempted preventative trimming, we had a woman bolt out of her house and call us ‘murderers” at the top of her lungs.
These are the same people that scream the loudest when their power doesn’t get restored immediately after a storm.
I watched the same scenario be replayed over and over for years.
When you suggested that some trimming was necessary to cut down on outages you would swear you were asking to kill one of their puppies.
Woodbridge is a wealthy suburb of New Haven where doctors, lawyers, and Yale professors like to live.
They like the trees because it makes them feel like they have privacy.
Most are lacking in common sense, but that should have been obvious from my first sentence.
This whole micro-grid thing sounds suspect. How can it be more efficient to generate electricity from thousands of local power stations than a few centrally located ones? Sure there are losses in transmissions, but what losses are there in building thousands of power plants?
The article seems to assume that sometime next week we'll have developed much better solar, wind, and fuel cell technology, and that somehow these systems will require no energy to build.
Also the only way that solar and wind can make any sense at all because of the large swings in the amount of power they generate, is if their outputs are mixed in with a huge quantity of power that can absorb and distribute those waves (or more like ripples) of power to the places that need it.
If a small micro-grid depended primarily on solar and wind power they would have to build some sort of huge storage system (batteries, flywheels, dams to hold water pumped up hill, etc.) to manage the swings.
And where are these solar panels, windmills, fuel cells, etc. manufactured for these small micro-grids? Are they cobbled together in the garages of town residents? Do old ladies get together in "knitting circles" to create solar quilts?
This is all such infuriating nonsense.
So the police state . . . of the art surveillance equipment will continue to work even if there’s a blackout?
Assume those making fun of the microgrid also make fun of preppers. Or maybe they just trust big brother to take care of us, come what may, and that the cellphone, power, and interwebs run by majik.
Having redundant power and local peaker or muni generating capacity is a plus when it comes to securing employers who have data centers.
Yeah us peons will feel oh so much safer knowing that the First Select Woman will have power in her powder room while we all shiver in the dark.
Of course we could spend the money putting in buried power lines so everyone would have power, but then what good would it be to be a First select person if everyone has power?
She does not want to put in Generators, she wants to put in the infrastructure so she can tap everyone else’s generators. Think of it as a direct energy tax to keep the lights and heat on in city hall.
Even if you put in a micro grid, (which is basicly putting line interactive inverters on every power source in the county), in storm conditions you have to feed the grid with backup generators. Micro Grids are like the economy, they stall out if there are more takers than makers. Micro Grids are a wonderful idea, on paper. But in the case of a storm where wind power is shut down and solar is not working, micro grids are useless.
So this “First Select Person” is as usual a blithering idiot spending money buying the most expensive wrong solution for a problem that only makes it worse.
Buy a generator for city hall and the Millions of tax dollars you save could pay for the fuel for a decade.
That would work. But to be realistic, City hall is not open in a storm anyway. Bleeping loony’s run the funny farm now.