INTELLIGENT GREEN TECHNOLOGY
E
lectrical power is essential. From
the time when our alarm goes off in
the morning to when we turn the
lights off at night, we use electrical power.
In terms of magnitude, each person in the
US spends around $3,052 on electricity
based on 2012 statistics. With a population
of about 314 million people at the time, our
energy habits equate to spending something
in the order of $958 billion per year.
Homes, businesses, healthcare,
community infrastructure and educational
institutions all rely on power. Yet, due to
an aging infrastructure and increasing
demand, our electrical grid is not as
reliable or resilient as we need. In the
face of major storms, grid outages, grid
instabilities, cyber threats and other
events, we need to be smarter and more
cost-efficient about how we generate,
manage, distribute and strengthen our
power grids.
With increased capacity of solar, wind,
energy storage, combined heat and power
and other distributed energy resources,
there is an opportunity to optimise energy
to support resiliency to critical areas.
In addition, as technology and material
costs for solar PV and energy storage have
The costs to
generate and
store energy
are decreasing,
which is changing
the nature of the
utility grid from
a centralised
generation model
to a distributed
system of sources
and loads.
improved, it is now possible to generate
reliable energy to improve grid resiliency
at competitive market pricing levels.
Over the last decade, microgrids have
become an increasingly compelling means
to not only keep the power on, but to
manage distributed energy resources and
energy costs. The primary trends driving
microgrid growth include:
Resiliency requirements stemming
from extreme weather, power outages
New business models for microgrid
ownership involving multiple
stakeholders
Technology innovations enabling
strategic energy management
Opportunity for microgrids that support
commercial and industrial customers
Microgrids must be able to operate in
parallel with the grid and as standalone
electrical power systems that consist
of multiple generating assets and often
storage sources supplying loads, which can
be powered independent of the primary
utility transmission and distribution grid.
Microgrids driving
migration towards
smart energy
The falling costs of renewable energy sources has
led to the development of controller based micro
power grids as the way forward, according to a
report by power management vendor Eaton.
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