
Decentralized Microgridding (2018) - lelf
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vbngmd/decentralized-microgridding-can-provide-90-of-a-neighborhoods-energy-needs-study-finds
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cameronh90
How does something like this work at the density of a town or city, with
people living in apartment blocks?

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hinkley
One wonders what centralized microgridding would look like.

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nixpulvis
Probably the fever dream of many Oligarchs. :P But in all seriousness:

I think the term "microgrid" started out because that's exactly what they
were... small grids in places like islands or rural areas.

We learned a lot about how to make a sustainable grid in this contexts, and so
the term sticks a bit, even as we start talking about macro-scale microgrids,
or just decentralized generation. Especially because the "micro" element of
these new grids plays a much larger role.

Also... regulations, protocols and standards are a form of centralization,
which will all play a large role in these "smart" grids.

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hinkley
From what I can recall of the Tesla/Edison disagreement, Edison was building
microgrids for wealthy individuals. Tesla had solutions that worked over
larger distances, and Westinghouse enabled him to do it (starting with the
hydro power plant at Niagara Falls)

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nixpulvis
DC, simple and easy. AC, complex and scalable...

Except, my surface level (pun intended) understanding of this, is that it's
actually not that simple. AC may have been easier to deal with at high
voltages (and thus long distances) at one point, but due to the skin effect
and RMS power not determining the safe tolerances for transmission lines (I
think this is true), there are some issues with this approach.

Nowadays, it's possible to build safe HVDC systems, I think partially due to
the existence of HVDC breakers.

That said, you lose a channel of communication assuming your power is DC, and
that signal is used in AC to help shape the generation / switching / etc. We
could always try superimposing signals on DC power lines, but I digress.

