All-renewable microgrids as a way of preparing for natural disasters
August 30, 2023 8:58 PM Subscribe
As natural disasters loom, these towns are taking control of their power by building microgrids. Two communities that went without power during Black Summer are getting a microgrid to keep the lights on during network outages. As another dangerous fire season looms, is this technology the way forward?
Microgrids have two main advantages for natural disasters:
1. No lengthy powerlines going through bush/forest where they can start a serious fire.
2. Even if the wider network goes down, the people on the microgrid still have power to operate water pumps to fight fires.
Microgrids have two main advantages for natural disasters:
1. No lengthy powerlines going through bush/forest where they can start a serious fire.
2. Even if the wider network goes down, the people on the microgrid still have power to operate water pumps to fight fires.
Came to say what Flabdablet said so well.
Demand is a variable too.
Solar and wind are nice pair for dealing with grid failure from fires, excess heat/demand, floods, storms. The mass mortality events in heatwaves are a good example: having aircondititioning is not enough, if you can't power it.
As the crumbles overtake our fossil legacy infrastructure, communities that want to be viable places for human settlement and economic activity will need to get off the expensive and fragile dependence having a continual and growing supply of finite fuels from far away.
posted by AnchoriteOfPalgrave at 12:09 AM on August 31, 2023 [5 favorites]
Demand is a variable too.
Solar and wind are nice pair for dealing with grid failure from fires, excess heat/demand, floods, storms. The mass mortality events in heatwaves are a good example: having aircondititioning is not enough, if you can't power it.
As the crumbles overtake our fossil legacy infrastructure, communities that want to be viable places for human settlement and economic activity will need to get off the expensive and fragile dependence having a continual and growing supply of finite fuels from far away.
posted by AnchoriteOfPalgrave at 12:09 AM on August 31, 2023 [5 favorites]
Microgrids cost more up front than similarly sized parts of a simple large grid would, but like all energy efficiency measures they pay multiples of that up-front cost back over their expected service lives compared to more centralized alternatives.
I see the rise of microgrids as part of a general backlash against the ruthless pursuit of market "efficiency" at all costs that the industrialized nations have all been orienting public and commercial policy toward since the Chicago school of economics got in Thatcher and Reagan's ears all those decades ago.
Turns out, externalities don't stay politely outside just because economists choose not to measure them, and disaster mitigation insurance only stays affordable for as long as most people also spend reasonable amounts on disaster prevention. Who'd have thought?
posted by flabdablet at 1:21 AM on August 31, 2023 [7 favorites]
I see the rise of microgrids as part of a general backlash against the ruthless pursuit of market "efficiency" at all costs that the industrialized nations have all been orienting public and commercial policy toward since the Chicago school of economics got in Thatcher and Reagan's ears all those decades ago.
Turns out, externalities don't stay politely outside just because economists choose not to measure them, and disaster mitigation insurance only stays affordable for as long as most people also spend reasonable amounts on disaster prevention. Who'd have thought?
posted by flabdablet at 1:21 AM on August 31, 2023 [7 favorites]
The fossil fuel lobby won't just sit around while their market collapses....the freezes and outages make shortages, and shortages make great profit.
posted by eustatic at 1:36 AM on August 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by eustatic at 1:36 AM on August 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'm not a big fan of decentralised generation because like all human activities which we have developed, large-scale centralised projects provide lower costs. The cost reduction in wind and solar is not from Auntie Millie's back-yard array but from massive utility scale projects.
Microgrids cost more up front than similarly sized parts of a simple large grid would, but like all energy efficiency measures they pay multiples of that up-front cost back over their expected service lives compared to more centralized alternatives.
I don't think microgrids are an energy efficiency measure and I've never seen much evidence that they pay multiples on investment.
I see the rise of microgrids as part of a general backlash against the ruthless pursuit of market "efficiency" at all costs that the industrialized nations have all been orienting public and commercial policy toward since the Chicago school of economics got in Thatcher and Reagan's ears all those decades ago.
I don't see that the drive to scale-up and centralise generation has anything to do with the Chicago school of Economics. The Soviet Union was keen on it decades earlier and in fact, Thatcher-era de-regulation killed the nationalised and centralised electricity generating boards which were replaced with a completely decentralised grid architecture.
The replacement of large, centralised, state-owned or heavily state regulated utilities with decentralised generation is actually a classic neoliberal move.
Even the end-point of this type of fire-risk driven permissive islanding doesn't really look like radical decentralisation. It was built by and operated by Endeavour Energy which is the regional electricity network operator and is effectively part of their capital optimisation strategy (upgrading the substation and/or adding redundant links would have cost a lot more). This will become more common for remote communities at the edge of grids but most humans live in cities.
The day will come, I hope, when we all just calm the fuck down about "baseload electricity" and start treating industrial production as a seasonal enterprise, much as we already do for farming. There is no reason on God's green Earth why aluminium smelters or city desalination plants or calcining furnaces or steel mills need to be run flat-out in the dead of winter.
We may have little choice, in which case we'd better get comfortable with it. Normal seasonal variation is a much easier problem to do with than tail-of-the-distribution events where there is little wind or solar production for several weeks over a large area. We might end up with industrial production which operates continuously under normal conditions but is shutdown-tolerant and just accept that every 10 years there will be a month of widespread industrial production shutdown - the characteristics of energy systems are such that accepting some disruption makes the overall system design much cheaper. Desal plants using a pressure-centre design already flex production up and down to match net energy between solar PV production and demand so as to keep their power prices low. Aluminium smelters likewise are the classic example of industrial facilities which tune production up and down to respond to power price.
The fossil fuel lobby won't just sit around while their market collapses....the freezes and outages make shortages, and shortages make great profit.
I wish I could live in the fantasy world where fossil fuel demand was collapsing and only the frantic rearguard action of lobbyists was keeping it alive.
posted by atrazine at 2:43 AM on August 31, 2023 [8 favorites]
Microgrids cost more up front than similarly sized parts of a simple large grid would, but like all energy efficiency measures they pay multiples of that up-front cost back over their expected service lives compared to more centralized alternatives.
I don't think microgrids are an energy efficiency measure and I've never seen much evidence that they pay multiples on investment.
I see the rise of microgrids as part of a general backlash against the ruthless pursuit of market "efficiency" at all costs that the industrialized nations have all been orienting public and commercial policy toward since the Chicago school of economics got in Thatcher and Reagan's ears all those decades ago.
I don't see that the drive to scale-up and centralise generation has anything to do with the Chicago school of Economics. The Soviet Union was keen on it decades earlier and in fact, Thatcher-era de-regulation killed the nationalised and centralised electricity generating boards which were replaced with a completely decentralised grid architecture.
The replacement of large, centralised, state-owned or heavily state regulated utilities with decentralised generation is actually a classic neoliberal move.
Even the end-point of this type of fire-risk driven permissive islanding doesn't really look like radical decentralisation. It was built by and operated by Endeavour Energy which is the regional electricity network operator and is effectively part of their capital optimisation strategy (upgrading the substation and/or adding redundant links would have cost a lot more). This will become more common for remote communities at the edge of grids but most humans live in cities.
The day will come, I hope, when we all just calm the fuck down about "baseload electricity" and start treating industrial production as a seasonal enterprise, much as we already do for farming. There is no reason on God's green Earth why aluminium smelters or city desalination plants or calcining furnaces or steel mills need to be run flat-out in the dead of winter.
We may have little choice, in which case we'd better get comfortable with it. Normal seasonal variation is a much easier problem to do with than tail-of-the-distribution events where there is little wind or solar production for several weeks over a large area. We might end up with industrial production which operates continuously under normal conditions but is shutdown-tolerant and just accept that every 10 years there will be a month of widespread industrial production shutdown - the characteristics of energy systems are such that accepting some disruption makes the overall system design much cheaper. Desal plants using a pressure-centre design already flex production up and down to match net energy between solar PV production and demand so as to keep their power prices low. Aluminium smelters likewise are the classic example of industrial facilities which tune production up and down to respond to power price.
The fossil fuel lobby won't just sit around while their market collapses....the freezes and outages make shortages, and shortages make great profit.
I wish I could live in the fantasy world where fossil fuel demand was collapsing and only the frantic rearguard action of lobbyists was keeping it alive.
posted by atrazine at 2:43 AM on August 31, 2023 [8 favorites]
There is no reason on God's green Earth why aluminium smelters or city desalination plants or calcining furnaces or steel mills need to be run flat-out in the dead of winter.
FMD. This is something I had honestly never thought about. Ta. Like, if PV is a big thing, then obviously (here, at least) it’s seasonal. Why can’t aluminium be a bit seasonal?
posted by pompomtom at 4:01 AM on August 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
FMD. This is something I had honestly never thought about. Ta. Like, if PV is a big thing, then obviously (here, at least) it’s seasonal. Why can’t aluminium be a bit seasonal?
posted by pompomtom at 4:01 AM on August 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
Also: +1 microgrids. The most of heard of them is from the Netherlands, and it seems to me that some rural Australians are super-well positioned to both implement them and benefit from them.
posted by pompomtom at 4:08 AM on August 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by pompomtom at 4:08 AM on August 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Why can’t aluminium be a bit seasonal?
Why can't a lot of things be a bit seasonal?
Warehousing stuff for months at a stretch costs a whole lot less than trying to warehouse enough electricity to smooth out seasonal supply variability. I would expect the cost of warehousing most stuff to be easily offset by the lowered cost of production during periods of electricity oversupply. Increased warehousing at every level of every supply chain also makes all of those chains way harder to disrupt.
posted by flabdablet at 5:12 AM on August 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
Why can't a lot of things be a bit seasonal?
Warehousing stuff for months at a stretch costs a whole lot less than trying to warehouse enough electricity to smooth out seasonal supply variability. I would expect the cost of warehousing most stuff to be easily offset by the lowered cost of production during periods of electricity oversupply. Increased warehousing at every level of every supply chain also makes all of those chains way harder to disrupt.
posted by flabdablet at 5:12 AM on August 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
This industrial work season idea is blowing my mind, and I like to think I'm pretty up to date with environmental stuff. But dang, yeah, why the fuck do these things have to be running 365 days a year? They don't, if we can get other parts of our industrial economy more efficient.
As for micro grids, I'm a big fan of them for rural and regional Australia. I have no idea if they'd be appropriate anywhere else, but for areas which are already suffering disconnection from the grid each summer, they'd be a life saver.
posted by harriet vane at 5:21 AM on August 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
As for micro grids, I'm a big fan of them for rural and regional Australia. I have no idea if they'd be appropriate anywhere else, but for areas which are already suffering disconnection from the grid each summer, they'd be a life saver.
posted by harriet vane at 5:21 AM on August 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
They run 365 to maximize the return on capital. Also at least with the aluminum plant I'm familiar with it takes weeks/months to restart from cold. Probably something that could be designed around but it's not currently something one can switch on and off like a light.
posted by Mitheral at 5:45 AM on August 31, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Mitheral at 5:45 AM on August 31, 2023 [6 favorites]
why the fuck do these things have to be running 365 days a year?
B-b-b-but profit!
That's why problem industries need to be nationalized.
Unfortunately, the world is headed in exactly the opposite direction, because the nest eggs of society are now firmly in the grip of the stock market.
posted by CynicalKnight at 5:50 AM on August 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
B-b-b-but profit!
That's why problem industries need to be nationalized.
Unfortunately, the world is headed in exactly the opposite direction, because the nest eggs of society are now firmly in the grip of the stock market.
posted by CynicalKnight at 5:50 AM on August 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
One of the things that makes our material civilisation possible is getting the absolute maximum out of every unit of capital investment. If you spend $5bn to build the most energy efficient, labour efficient aluminium smelter you need to then operate it all the time in order to recover that capital cost over as large a volume as possible.
If we move to a world where energy availability is much more seasonal, that balance changes - you might for instance want to maximise energy use flexibility rather than total energy use so that you can tune down and up to reflect changing energy availability. That probably means re-designing a lot of plant and even some basic process chemistry since the condition they've been optimised for is to run flat out on constant power.
That could mean looking for process chemistries that have one or more highly energy intensive steps with easily storeable substances before and after the step - in that case you might run the "plant" all the time but only ramp up the endothermic step during periods of energy hyper-availability.
That's why problem industries need to be nationalized.
The Soviet Union loved massive integrated plants that run 24/7 more than anything. Everyone designs, builds, and runs these plants that way for underlying reasons of physics not because of their personal views on the Value Theory of Labour.
posted by atrazine at 5:57 AM on August 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
If we move to a world where energy availability is much more seasonal, that balance changes - you might for instance want to maximise energy use flexibility rather than total energy use so that you can tune down and up to reflect changing energy availability. That probably means re-designing a lot of plant and even some basic process chemistry since the condition they've been optimised for is to run flat out on constant power.
That could mean looking for process chemistries that have one or more highly energy intensive steps with easily storeable substances before and after the step - in that case you might run the "plant" all the time but only ramp up the endothermic step during periods of energy hyper-availability.
That's why problem industries need to be nationalized.
The Soviet Union loved massive integrated plants that run 24/7 more than anything. Everyone designs, builds, and runs these plants that way for underlying reasons of physics not because of their personal views on the Value Theory of Labour.
posted by atrazine at 5:57 AM on August 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
FMD. This is something I had honestly never thought about. Ta. Like, if PV is a big thing, then obviously (here, at least) it’s seasonal. Why can’t aluminium be a bit seasonal?
A big part of the answer is economics and capitalism - if you want aluminium (or whatever else), you need a factory that makes it; somebody has to pay for that factory and they want to make as much money as possible. Asking them to idle for big chunks of the year is simply asking them to give up a bunch of money. You need pretty strong levers to make that happen - basically either subsidizing the idle months, or having massive additional costs to running during that time that would make it not worth their while. And in either case, you also need to make sure what you do doesn't wreck the economic viability compared to other places that don't idle. If you shut down your plant for 10% of the year, your cost per unit goes up compared to the country next door that doesn't idle, and now they capture the market.
Along related lines, factories employ workers. Some people really like seasonal work, but most don't. Most people are trying to work full time, year-round. Once again, you need the whole system to support seasonal work if it's for the greater good - otherwise you're just saying "We think being a worker in an aluminium factory should just be worse than other kinds of work because it's off-limits for part of the year." This problem is not unsolvable, but it is also not simple to solve. And if you build the kinds of rules, supports, subsidies, etc that make it possible, you've just started to describe a wildly different kind of economic system than we have, one much, much less capitalist and much more socialist than the current one.
I want that world. badly. But it's a pretty big shift to make.
posted by Tomorrowful at 6:01 AM on August 31, 2023 [10 favorites]
A big part of the answer is economics and capitalism - if you want aluminium (or whatever else), you need a factory that makes it; somebody has to pay for that factory and they want to make as much money as possible. Asking them to idle for big chunks of the year is simply asking them to give up a bunch of money. You need pretty strong levers to make that happen - basically either subsidizing the idle months, or having massive additional costs to running during that time that would make it not worth their while. And in either case, you also need to make sure what you do doesn't wreck the economic viability compared to other places that don't idle. If you shut down your plant for 10% of the year, your cost per unit goes up compared to the country next door that doesn't idle, and now they capture the market.
Along related lines, factories employ workers. Some people really like seasonal work, but most don't. Most people are trying to work full time, year-round. Once again, you need the whole system to support seasonal work if it's for the greater good - otherwise you're just saying "We think being a worker in an aluminium factory should just be worse than other kinds of work because it's off-limits for part of the year." This problem is not unsolvable, but it is also not simple to solve. And if you build the kinds of rules, supports, subsidies, etc that make it possible, you've just started to describe a wildly different kind of economic system than we have, one much, much less capitalist and much more socialist than the current one.
I want that world. badly. But it's a pretty big shift to make.
posted by Tomorrowful at 6:01 AM on August 31, 2023 [10 favorites]
While there must be some issues that I'm overlooking, microgrids seem on their face to be very much an appropriate response (or... preparation?) for disasters. I remember wondering why we wouldn't put solar panels on every roof in Puerto Rico built in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 6:04 AM on August 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 6:04 AM on August 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
Ukraine is discovering something similar. Knocking out fuel tanks is easy. Knocking out big centralized generators is easy. But turbines and solar panels take a lot of ammunition to take out. And in the meantime, they keep charging those done batteries.
posted by ocschwar at 6:30 AM on August 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by ocschwar at 6:30 AM on August 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
factories employ workers
I was waiting for something to mention that. Unless workers can be paid while the factories are idle, they're going to bear the brunt of it.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:36 AM on August 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
I was waiting for something to mention that. Unless workers can be paid while the factories are idle, they're going to bear the brunt of it.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:36 AM on August 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
with the aluminum plant I'm familiar with it takes weeks/months to restart from cold.
The fact that this is known tells me that that aluminium plant is not, in fact, running at 100% of its maximum possible production capacity 100% of the time.
What proportion of it is down for maintenance on any given day? What would be the economic consequences of scheduling maintenance so that it becomes a seasonal thing rather than something that needs to be staggered so as to keep production rates close to constant?
posted by flabdablet at 7:09 AM on August 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
The fact that this is known tells me that that aluminium plant is not, in fact, running at 100% of its maximum possible production capacity 100% of the time.
What proportion of it is down for maintenance on any given day? What would be the economic consequences of scheduling maintenance so that it becomes a seasonal thing rather than something that needs to be staggered so as to keep production rates close to constant?
posted by flabdablet at 7:09 AM on August 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
I remember wondering why we wouldn't put solar panels on every roof in Puerto Rico built in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
that question kinda answers itself??
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:15 AM on August 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
that question kinda answers itself??
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:15 AM on August 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
As the rump of rural white culture begins to become increasingly radicalized, we're going to see increasing terrorism ostensibly in the name of Jeezus, or "parents' rights", or whatever smoke was blown up their butts most recently. One of the easiest targets for these people will be the power grid: it requires a lot of delicate infrastructure in remote areas. So above and beyond the cost aspects, we might wish to consider how smaller grids make us less easily threatened by hateful reactionaries.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:15 AM on August 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:15 AM on August 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
I wish I could live in the fantasy world where fossil fuel demand was collapsing and only the frantic rearguard action of lobbyists was keeping it alive.
posted by atrazine at 2:43 AM on August 31
You joke but listen to the talk coming out of univ of Houston about their stranded assets issues. Debt is a hell of a drug.
They can't survive if consumption is flat, much less declining. We can't survive unless it declines.
posted by eustatic at 7:43 AM on August 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by atrazine at 2:43 AM on August 31
You joke but listen to the talk coming out of univ of Houston about their stranded assets issues. Debt is a hell of a drug.
They can't survive if consumption is flat, much less declining. We can't survive unless it declines.
posted by eustatic at 7:43 AM on August 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
I appreciate reading flabdabet and atrazine's conflicting comments on whether microgrids provide meaningful efficiency. I'd love to read something more expert on this, a detailed article or a book. Specifically about whether microgrids make sense in first world countries that have a mostly-functioning large scale grid already. Anyone have recommendations?
I'd sure love a microgrid for me and about 200 houses near me in Grass Valley, CA. We don't have a reliable grid here and I want to escape PG&E. I've already done what I can with my individual house (a generator, grid-tied solar) but if I could share power sources with some neighbors and a communal battery we could be better off. Note I'm envisioning a classic wealthy-person play here, the neighborhood I have in mind has buried power lines and houses that have already invested in solar panels. One issue with microgrids is they enable more inequality.
posted by Nelson at 8:26 AM on August 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'd sure love a microgrid for me and about 200 houses near me in Grass Valley, CA. We don't have a reliable grid here and I want to escape PG&E. I've already done what I can with my individual house (a generator, grid-tied solar) but if I could share power sources with some neighbors and a communal battery we could be better off. Note I'm envisioning a classic wealthy-person play here, the neighborhood I have in mind has buried power lines and houses that have already invested in solar panels. One issue with microgrids is they enable more inequality.
posted by Nelson at 8:26 AM on August 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
The fact that this is known tells me that that aluminium plant is not, in fact, running at 100% of its maximum possible production capacity 100% of the time.
The employees went on strike in the case/timeline I'm familiar with. Some maintenance can be done either live or piecemeal through parallelization but most shutdowns I've been involved with aren't annual and the ones that are don't last for an entire winter.
But that is something that could be planned around in many cases however current infrastructure isn't setup for it. A lot of money, labour, time and capital would be needed.
posted by Mitheral at 9:16 AM on August 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
The employees went on strike in the case/timeline I'm familiar with. Some maintenance can be done either live or piecemeal through parallelization but most shutdowns I've been involved with aren't annual and the ones that are don't last for an entire winter.
But that is something that could be planned around in many cases however current infrastructure isn't setup for it. A lot of money, labour, time and capital would be needed.
posted by Mitheral at 9:16 AM on August 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
U.S. Department of Energy Announces Over $450 Million to Increase Access to Rooftop Solar Power for Puerto Rico Residents ... designed to incentivize the installation of up to 30,000–40,000 solar PV and battery storage systems for very low-income single-family households ... [or] with an energy-dependent disability ...
Solar Microgrid Keeps the Lights on in Castañer, Puerto Rico During Hurricane Fiona ... The solar microgrid, which includes battery storage, provides a secure and resilient electricity source for vital local businesses that include a popular bakery, post office, ice cream shop, beauty parlor, and barber shop, along with two residences.
I can't find many details about the "microgrid" but it looks like a standard PV+inverter system with 35 kWh of storage which isn't a lot, it could keep some food cool for a few days. Looks like there's a manual switch and likely a separate circuit for battery-powered loads which are all in the same area. Making a bonafide microgrid with multiple producers and consumers is a much taller order.
And after reading up on LUMA Energy I think the effort to decentralize power in Puerto Rico is more about circumventing human-caused problems than riding out hurricanes.
posted by credulous at 9:21 AM on August 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
Solar Microgrid Keeps the Lights on in Castañer, Puerto Rico During Hurricane Fiona ... The solar microgrid, which includes battery storage, provides a secure and resilient electricity source for vital local businesses that include a popular bakery, post office, ice cream shop, beauty parlor, and barber shop, along with two residences.
I can't find many details about the "microgrid" but it looks like a standard PV+inverter system with 35 kWh of storage which isn't a lot, it could keep some food cool for a few days. Looks like there's a manual switch and likely a separate circuit for battery-powered loads which are all in the same area. Making a bonafide microgrid with multiple producers and consumers is a much taller order.
And after reading up on LUMA Energy I think the effort to decentralize power in Puerto Rico is more about circumventing human-caused problems than riding out hurricanes.
posted by credulous at 9:21 AM on August 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
Living in Utah, I keep asking the question why LDS Meetinghouses aren't a) covered in solar and b) have on-site storage. We've got thousands of them spread across the region, centered in every community. They have massive, flat roofs, plenty of room for on-site storage to be tucked out of the way, and most all of them follow a standard blueprint. It'd be dead simple to build distributed power generation across the regional grid with resilient storage. It just makes sense and nobody is doing it. I think there is one meetinghouse that even has solar, and it was a "pilot project" from the 2010s that hasn't been picked up.
posted by msbutah at 12:48 PM on August 31, 2023
posted by msbutah at 12:48 PM on August 31, 2023
I've done some work on island electricity grids, specifically for trying to come up with routes to move from diesel generation to RE. In the cases I've looked at the microgrid already exists, in as much as the buildings are all local grid connected, but they are run from multiple diesel generators. We were looking at whether there was a way to replace some or all of the diesel with renewables. Even for places with some other potential resource, the route to RE basically meant wind + solar + storage, and the question was in what capacities, and how do costs compare. Generally, we saw little tolerance for reductions in security of supply, which shaped how much storage capacity was needed, with this having an impact on cost and being determined by previous reliability (ie what % of time was electricity available) and the historical solar and wind data (ie how long with the storage have to cover).
The economics of going over to RE was pretty good for non-mainland connected islands, with the key limit being available land resource - some islands we looked at had very high population density and this meant a 100% RE supply was not realisable. The other practical issue was regulation of markets. Getting a French island to 100% RE was entirely dependent on the French state energy provider being willing to step in. French electricity prices are socialised across all French citizens, which is good if you live on an isolated island, subsidised by people in mainland France, but EDF have little appetite for playing with that cross-subsidy, for example by messing around with innovation.
Economics of the kind of microgrid mentioned in the FPP, basically national grid connected, were less positive, since the grid connection removes the reliance on diesel. So I would think there are some key questions: who will pay for any strengthening of the local grid/partial islanding of the local grid? Is there any obligation on the local utilities to do so to maintain reliability levels? Does their local regulatory system allow for the utility to reclaim the costs of the less established option and socialise that cost across its wider set of customers? Because that would be quite a forward thinking regulator if it did. Even if there is scope for innovative approaches written into the regulation, can a sufficient case be made? Will the network operator have the appetite?
posted by biffa at 1:36 PM on August 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
The economics of going over to RE was pretty good for non-mainland connected islands, with the key limit being available land resource - some islands we looked at had very high population density and this meant a 100% RE supply was not realisable. The other practical issue was regulation of markets. Getting a French island to 100% RE was entirely dependent on the French state energy provider being willing to step in. French electricity prices are socialised across all French citizens, which is good if you live on an isolated island, subsidised by people in mainland France, but EDF have little appetite for playing with that cross-subsidy, for example by messing around with innovation.
Economics of the kind of microgrid mentioned in the FPP, basically national grid connected, were less positive, since the grid connection removes the reliance on diesel. So I would think there are some key questions: who will pay for any strengthening of the local grid/partial islanding of the local grid? Is there any obligation on the local utilities to do so to maintain reliability levels? Does their local regulatory system allow for the utility to reclaim the costs of the less established option and socialise that cost across its wider set of customers? Because that would be quite a forward thinking regulator if it did. Even if there is scope for innovative approaches written into the regulation, can a sufficient case be made? Will the network operator have the appetite?
posted by biffa at 1:36 PM on August 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's certainly true that one of three things are true:
1) Substantial amounts of oil company reserve assets are worthless because despite being valued (at an assumed sales price - lifting costs) they will never be produced.
2) They will be produced, and as a result we will not be able to maintain a 2.0C limit on global warming.
3) They are produced but somehow we manage to get decent capture rates at scale on carbon capture and scale the technology quickly - I think the odds of this are exceptionally low, especially the chances of rapid scaling but I've included it for completeness.
posted by atrazine at 3:01 PM on August 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
1) Substantial amounts of oil company reserve assets are worthless because despite being valued (at an assumed sales price - lifting costs) they will never be produced.
2) They will be produced, and as a result we will not be able to maintain a 2.0C limit on global warming.
3) They are produced but somehow we manage to get decent capture rates at scale on carbon capture and scale the technology quickly - I think the odds of this are exceptionally low, especially the chances of rapid scaling but I've included it for completeness.
posted by atrazine at 3:01 PM on August 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Well there's also, at least, a fourth possibility of companies receiving compensation for proven reserves that they leave in the ground.
posted by kickingtheground at 11:23 PM on August 31, 2023
posted by kickingtheground at 11:23 PM on August 31, 2023
aka the "Nice little planet you've got here, such a shame if something was to happen to it" contract.
posted by flabdablet at 3:08 AM on September 1, 2023
posted by flabdablet at 3:08 AM on September 1, 2023
I appreciate reading flabdabet and atrazine's conflicting comments on whether microgrids provide meaningful efficiency. I'd love to read something more expert on this, a detailed article or a book. Specifically about whether microgrids make sense in first world countries that have a mostly-functioning large scale grid already. Anyone have recommendations?I don't think you're going to be able to find an article or book unfortunately. Its too new a field and there isn't a general audience.
You might have some luck looking through academic papers or conference proceedings, I attended a conference recently where someone attempted to do an automated survey to find areas that would benefit from a microgrid (I didn't really agree with their methodology though).
Microgrids can make sense in a developed country in rural areas where a small number of already grid connected customers are a long way from the rest of the grid. A microgrid can allow a utility or the community itself to defer augmentation of the power line linking the microgrid area to the network backbone when the load increases or remove the need to rebuild the power line when it reaches the end of its design life which is usually after 50ish years.
But in addition to pure geography whether a microgrid makes sense also heavily depends on the answers to a number of questions like "what is the economic/political value of power supply reliability for these customers?", "how long do you expect a grid connection outage to last?", "who is going to drive out there and fix the microgrid when it stops working?", "how are you going to amortise microgrid expenses across the broader network?", etc etc.
posted by zymil at 4:03 AM on September 1, 2023
Hmm. So once again I am half-seriously suggesting that the solution to a problem is to destroy capitalism. It's been a bit of a theme for me this week.
In full seriousness though, I love the discussion here about what the real-world implications are of doing things differently.
posted by harriet vane at 4:56 AM on September 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
In full seriousness though, I love the discussion here about what the real-world implications are of doing things differently.
posted by harriet vane at 4:56 AM on September 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
So once again I am half-seriously suggesting that the solution to a problem is to destroy capitalism.
There's quite a lot of electricity provision that's been run on a more socialised basis, with lots of state ownership, certainly historically, and even currently. Innovation can be pretty difficult in either situation.
posted by biffa at 5:48 AM on September 1, 2023
There's quite a lot of electricity provision that's been run on a more socialised basis, with lots of state ownership, certainly historically, and even currently. Innovation can be pretty difficult in either situation.
posted by biffa at 5:48 AM on September 1, 2023
Here in Victoria we used to have the State Electricity Commission. Its biggest generators were all lignite fired and sited in the Latrobe Valley, it priced the electricity it provided on a cost recovery basis, it employed enough people to keep the distribution networks well maintained, electricity prices were not burdensome and system reliability was really really good.
Then Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and Deregulation happened, and then in 1992 Victoria got the Kennett Government, and Jeff Kennett was a know-nothing loudmouthed gaffe-prone fascist fucknuckle welded to an ideology that said the only way to balance the State's books was to sell off every State asset he could get his hands on because something something something efficiency something black hole of debt something.
So the State Electricity Commission got broken apart and the pieces sold off at fire sale prices to a pack of private concerns, and instead of an electricity supply system we got what is now ludicrously and unashamedly referred to as a "market" even though most of the competition in it is the fake kind you get when the only actual choice the consumer can make is which billing organization will charge them for the use of what are still the only wires available to connect to their house.
The private operators instantly did what private operators always do first: sacked most of the maintenance staff and gave those remaining no choice but to accept truly terrible worsening in their conditions of employment and workplace safety practices. The Latrobe Valley quickly became synonymous with unemployment and disadvantage, and the distribution networks inexorably deteriorated, and after the horrendous Black Saturday bushfires in 2009 the Royal Commission investigating those fires had this to say:
So we'll see how that goes over the next few years. I'm expecting it to go quite a lot better than what we currently have.
posted by flabdablet at 10:47 AM on September 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
Then Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and Deregulation happened, and then in 1992 Victoria got the Kennett Government, and Jeff Kennett was a know-nothing loudmouthed gaffe-prone fascist fucknuckle welded to an ideology that said the only way to balance the State's books was to sell off every State asset he could get his hands on because something something something efficiency something black hole of debt something.
So the State Electricity Commission got broken apart and the pieces sold off at fire sale prices to a pack of private concerns, and instead of an electricity supply system we got what is now ludicrously and unashamedly referred to as a "market" even though most of the competition in it is the fake kind you get when the only actual choice the consumer can make is which billing organization will charge them for the use of what are still the only wires available to connect to their house.
The private operators instantly did what private operators always do first: sacked most of the maintenance staff and gave those remaining no choice but to accept truly terrible worsening in their conditions of employment and workplace safety practices. The Latrobe Valley quickly became synonymous with unemployment and disadvantage, and the distribution networks inexorably deteriorated, and after the horrendous Black Saturday bushfires in 2009 the Royal Commission investigating those fires had this to say:
Victoria’s electricity assets are ageing, and the age of the assets contributed to three of the electricity-caused fires on 7 February 2009—the Kilmore East, Coleraine and Horsham fires. Distribution businesses’ capacity to respond to an ageing network is, however, constrained by the electricity industry’s economic regulatory regime. The regime favours the status quo and makes it difficult to bring about substantial reform. As components of the distribution network age and approach the end of their engineering life, there will probably be an increase in the number of fires resulting from asset failures unless urgent preventive steps are taken.The Andrews Labor Government was re-elected this year on a promise to resurrect the SEC. The new organization won't be re-nationalizing the generators or distribution networks, but it will itself remain in public hands, investing heavily in renewable generation and storage and selling the resulting electricity into the Victorian wholesale market on a cost recovery basis. Which should at least limit the opportunities that all the commercial generators currently have to gouge the fuck out of that market every time demand starts sailing a bit uncomfortably close to the sun and wind.
So we'll see how that goes over the next few years. I'm expecting it to go quite a lot better than what we currently have.
posted by flabdablet at 10:47 AM on September 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
a fourth possibility of companies receiving compensation for proven reserves that they leave in the ground
This is essentially how slavery was abolished in many/most places. In a rare example of Britain being on the right side of history, regardless of their motivations, they spent significant money and resources freeing slaves/banning slavery/slave trading in both the Empire and other countries. Including spending more than 5% of GDP in 1833 in compensation to former slave owners in Britain and direct payments to several countries (or exerting economic and military pressure) to get them to sign bilateral treaties to abolish slavery.
posted by Mitheral at 6:05 PM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is essentially how slavery was abolished in many/most places. In a rare example of Britain being on the right side of history, regardless of their motivations, they spent significant money and resources freeing slaves/banning slavery/slave trading in both the Empire and other countries. Including spending more than 5% of GDP in 1833 in compensation to former slave owners in Britain and direct payments to several countries (or exerting economic and military pressure) to get them to sign bilateral treaties to abolish slavery.
posted by Mitheral at 6:05 PM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
While I am personally in favour of publicly owned, vertically integrated electricity systems I do think it's fair to point out that the most deeply and rapidly decarbonised electricity systems in the world are the Danish, German, and British which all use the same self-dispatched and highly decentralised economic model - network separate from generation and much generation owned by financial investors through SPVs and traded on the market.
On the other hand, the system which didn't need to decarbonise because it was already very low carbon - the French system - was built using starkly centralised methods and remains on the very edge of what European common legislation permits in terms of centralisation and vertical integration. EDF has just been taken back into effective French state ownership and the future of French electricity is a return to a highly centralised model after the barest dip of the toes into a liberalised model.
It is worth noting that the economic model used for most privatised electricity networks actually rewards networks for spending more money (because they can add capital investment to their rate base). I think but am not sure that this is true in Victoria as well. It is for regulators to ensure that enough is being spent without gold-plating and if that is not happening, it for regulators to explain to the public why they have rejected proposed capital investment as not being value for money rather than being "shocked, shocked" to findgambling underinvestment going on here. Often regulators are under pressure from political masters (even though they are notionally independent) to keep network tariffs low
So I guess my question is, did the distribution networks in Victoria actually spend less on asset replacement after privatisation than before? I know in other contexts (e.g. water in the UK) it has been pointed out, correctly, that privatised industries have spent less than they should have on asset replacement without acknowledging that they weren't spending enough before they were privatised either. Directly state controlled utilities are often under relentless pressure to keep costs down and may have budgets played with for political purposes at very short notice.
[I should disclose that I have advised networks internationally, including one in Vic, on wildfire resilience but I don't have any kind of financial interest in them remaining private]
Despite my preference for one system (centralised, vertically integrated, and publicly owned) over another, I'm a little sceptical of grand claims that a change to market organisation will solve the problem when both high and low carbon systems exist in either form and where pressures to control capital spending are fundamental and not just products of one model or the other. Soviet factory managers who over-spent their budgets were subject to demotion and not receiving the cash bonuses and privileges which were a big part of their compensation.
posted by atrazine at 7:08 AM on September 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
On the other hand, the system which didn't need to decarbonise because it was already very low carbon - the French system - was built using starkly centralised methods and remains on the very edge of what European common legislation permits in terms of centralisation and vertical integration. EDF has just been taken back into effective French state ownership and the future of French electricity is a return to a highly centralised model after the barest dip of the toes into a liberalised model.
It is worth noting that the economic model used for most privatised electricity networks actually rewards networks for spending more money (because they can add capital investment to their rate base). I think but am not sure that this is true in Victoria as well. It is for regulators to ensure that enough is being spent without gold-plating and if that is not happening, it for regulators to explain to the public why they have rejected proposed capital investment as not being value for money rather than being "shocked, shocked" to find
So I guess my question is, did the distribution networks in Victoria actually spend less on asset replacement after privatisation than before? I know in other contexts (e.g. water in the UK) it has been pointed out, correctly, that privatised industries have spent less than they should have on asset replacement without acknowledging that they weren't spending enough before they were privatised either. Directly state controlled utilities are often under relentless pressure to keep costs down and may have budgets played with for political purposes at very short notice.
[I should disclose that I have advised networks internationally, including one in Vic, on wildfire resilience but I don't have any kind of financial interest in them remaining private]
Despite my preference for one system (centralised, vertically integrated, and publicly owned) over another, I'm a little sceptical of grand claims that a change to market organisation will solve the problem when both high and low carbon systems exist in either form and where pressures to control capital spending are fundamental and not just products of one model or the other. Soviet factory managers who over-spent their budgets were subject to demotion and not receiving the cash bonuses and privileges which were a big part of their compensation.
posted by atrazine at 7:08 AM on September 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
I’m loving the new-SEC concept, if they don’t weirdly PPP the shit out of it.
(Destroying capitalism also good, of course)
posted by pompomtom at 4:05 AM on September 4, 2023
(Destroying capitalism also good, of course)
posted by pompomtom at 4:05 AM on September 4, 2023
The fight over California community solar: ‘It’s everyone vs. utilities’. Not quite microgrids but an adjacent topic. California is weird in not having very meaningful community solar projects now.
posted by Nelson at 10:09 AM on September 6, 2023
posted by Nelson at 10:09 AM on September 6, 2023
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In an ideal world, the electricity network would be constructed as a hierarchy of islandable decentralized nodes. Critical appliances would be designed with energy storage inbuilt so that they could charge themselves whenever electricity was available, and local solar PV arrays would be sized to provide all the power needed to keep their local critical appliances in an acceptable state of charge even under worst-case weather conditions.
Note that inbuilt energy storage doesn't need to be in the form of batteries for this to work. Quite enormous amounts of energy are currently devoted to heating things up and cooling them down at temperatures well below 100°C, and a lot of the storage required for those uses can be implemented simply as thermal mass. Most of today's hot water systems work exactly that way already.
Also note that the energy storage required to give a battery electric vehicle enough range to avoid range anxiety is just enormous compared to the scale of most household electricity use, and that the daily range actually used by most BEVs on most days will be nowhere even close to their design maximum. Round-trip efficiency for BEV charge/discharge cycles is already well over 90%, and this opens real possibilities for using BEVs as a major contributor to matching critical electricity demand with electricity availability.
Any PV array big enough to keep a household nicely charged in midwinter is of course massively overbuilt for the sunnier seasons. So in summer in the rural Australian bits of my ideal world, all the utes would be fully charged almost all the time and more than capable of running all their nearby fire pumps for as long as the water supplies held out.
Under this scenario, the main use for residential microgrids is to facilitate power sharing between residences ideally sited for solar collection and those more dependent on storage, and to act as net suppliers of electricity to the wider grid.
The day will come, I hope, when we all just calm the fuck down about "baseload electricity" and start treating industrial production as a seasonal enterprise, much as we already do for farming. There is no reason on God's green Earth why aluminium smelters or city desalination plants or calcining furnaces or steel mills need to be run flat-out in the dead of winter.
posted by flabdablet at 11:57 PM on August 30, 2023 [37 favorites]