Hurricane Irene, which knocked out power for approximately six million customers in 13 states and the District of Columbia last week, raises a question: What smart grid technology could have enabled homes, businesses, and mission critical institutions to have played a more vital role in providing reliability, security, and
Tag:
microgrid
Recent advances in the complexity of microgrids currently being installed are stimulating a rush to increase the versatility and function of a technology platform originally conceived around the notion of hyper-reliability. This is why the Department of Defense (DOD) is so enamored by the prospects of
The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) has long been seen as a clean technology pioneer. After all, this is a utility that shuttered a nuclear reactor after a public vote in 1989, and has since blazed trails on wind, solar, and energy efficient technologies.
The microgrid market today is in flux. Most projects being implemented around the world feature teams with a variety of players – large and small – each contributing specific components and services to pilot projects, the majority of them still considered to be in the R&D phase.
The lack of operating experience of
Government funding has played a key role in launching the microgrid market, especially at the federal government level. Yet there is, at present, few “microgrid” line items in most federal, state or local government budgets. In the Obama Administration’s ARRA stimulus package, there are categories for “customer-owned systems” and even “microgrids,” but these were never
Microgrids may be a hot topic among those forecasting key future trends shaping the world’s energy infrastructure, but few significant state-of-the-art commercial microgrids are actually up and running in North America, the world’s leading market for microgrids. One
On July 13th, GE and its partners issued a challenge to the world: Submit breakthrough ideas that transform the way we create, connect and use power and they,
The US electrical grid is a century-old “machine” built for a singular purpose: to power the development and industrialization of the nation’s economy. It is designed to deliver electrons from centralized power producing plants through transmission wires to end consumers. This archaic, unidirectional architecture is unreliable, inefficient, and unsafe.
Using many of the same technologies and assumptions first implemented in the 19th century, today, the grid must keep up with rising demand which outstrips available generating capacity and technological advancements designed to make the grid “smarter“.
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