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The flexibility market is gaining ground within the electricity industry. The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, there is more and more electricity generated from volatile renewable sources of energy […]
The post EM-Power Europe: Start-Ups Provide Smart Solutions for Smart Grids appeared first on POWER Magazine.
Green Ports Greening transport is a key objective of the European Green Deal. Transport accounts for 25% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions. Green transport developments focus on the supply chain and use of green energy carriers. MAGPIE project task 3.1 has been set out to map the current (supplied by fossil fuels) and the future energy demand (supplied by green energy..
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The post ‘Smart Microgrid Community’ Takes Shape in Canada appeared first on POWER Magazine.
Many areas across the globe are looking providing non-traditional power to residential neighborhoods, part of a push to make a community’s electricity supply more reliable and resilient. A development in Canada is one model of what is known as a “smart microgrid community.”
Elexicon Energy, the fourth largest municipally-owned electricity distributor in Ontario, along with real estate developer and builder Marshall Homes, and Canada’s Opus One Solutions, a global cleantech company, have partnered to create a “living smart grid” pilot community called Altona Towns. The project is supported by Ontario’s Ministry of Energy, Northern Development, under the Smart Grid and Grid Innovation funds.
The partners in May announced the project as the first planned nested microgrid installation in Canada that will integrate a full-scale, operational smart residential energy system. Altona Towns will “test, develop and launch the next generation of technologies that can turn electricity distribution systems into modern, digitally enabled grids,” according to the partners, who said the project could provide a blueprint for using microgrids to power thousands of homes. …
A control system that smooths out inter-area oscillations—a problem affecting power systems connected by relatively weak tie lines—has been successfully demonstrated by researchers from Sandia National Laboratories and Montana Tech University. The system that uses smart grid technology could allow utilities to push more power through transmission lines, possibly nixing the need for new transmission lines and help to stabilize the grid.
Electric power grids operate well below transmission capacity to avoid widespread outages due to inter-area oscillations, which occur when the standard frequency of 60 cycles per second increases on the utility side of the transmission line while the frequency on the customer side decreases, switching back and forth every second or two. “Most of the time these oscillations are well-behaved and not a problem—they are always there,” explained Sandia engineer David Schoenwald. “But at a moment when you are trying to push a large amount of power, like on a very hot day in the summer, these oscillations start to become less well behaved and can start to swing wildly.”…
Pairing solar with energy storage will be integral to cement the future of both emerging sectors, said experts at the Intersolar North America’s annual event held this week in San Francisco.
The three-day event and exhibition was co-located with ees North America, a stand-alone event focused on energy storage technologies and services. But experts from the separate industry events underscored that the sectors’ futures are aligned and should grow in tandem, calling for the backing of a joint, “smart solar” sector.
Solar’s Unique Revenue Catch-22
The solar sector, in particular, has seen a number of hurdles that threaten its widespread adoption, the most cited of which are linked to its non-dispatchable nature.
Though solar penetration has soared, behind-the-meter applications have been hampered by ruthless net energy metering battles between regulators and electric utilities in at least 20 states. Utilities argue that net metering customers don’t pay their fair share of grid expenses, raising costs for non-solar ratepayers, whereas the solar sector says that utilities don’t fully account for distributed solar’s value to the grid, such as capacity value, transmission and distribution deferral, and line loss savings.…