Clean Technica | By: George Harvey | January 24, 2018:
The design for a community microgrid project that is forming in Warner, New Hampshire, seems rather prosaic at first glance. It is simple, with a few buildings, some solar panels, batteries, inverters, and all the regular gear. It seems an appropriately small start for a town with only 444 people in its center and a total population well below 3,000.
However, I should have known something was up with this design right away, if for no other reason than because one of the people involved was Roy Morrison, who is a visionary, proclaimed an “energy expert” in the pages of Forbes, and author of books on sustainability. He described a very modest design:
“It will start with three buildings.”
“What kinds of buildings are they?” I asked.
“Residences, businesses. It really doesn’t matter.”
I stumbled mentally a little. “You mean you haven’t chosen them yet? Don’t they have to be selected carefully to be near each other?”
“No.”
Okay. Time to reset my thinking. “How do you wire them together?” I asked.
“You don’t. You use the grid.”
“But what if the grid is down?”
“Then they operate independently.”
“Wait a minute. Are you telling me that each building is its own microgrid?”
“Yes.”
“Then the community microgrid is made up of smaller microgrids?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“The community microgrid is as a virtual power plant…”
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