Microgrids

It Takes A Solar Village To Test A Microgrid

By Earth Techling


Old Solar Decathlon houses don’t die; they gather together to form a neighborhood – one prime for some groundbreaking experimentation in taking advantage of clean energy source.

At least, that’s the case at Missouri University of Science and Technology. Four past decathlon entries comprise the Solar Village at the Rolla, Mo., campus – and an important new twist is coming to the village: installation of a microgrid that will store and manage the renewable energy the houses produce. Keep reading →

 /  Published April 9, 2013 at 11:30 AM

Major Technology Disruption Seen Coming from Microgrids

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Innovations in the way electricity is created and delivered are already under way to transform the electricity system worldwide in the coming decade – and the innovations may be coming from surprising places.

“Other nations understand their success as nations depends almost entirely on their ability to electrify,” said Chris Hickman, CEO/President, Innovari, told GridWeek 2012 in Washington DC Oct. 2. Countries dealing with unreliable or insufficient power supplies are looking at distributed generating sources and microgrids in very different ways than the US does, he said. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 4, 2012 at 11:30 AM

Distributed Generation Tipping Point Approaches: Gen110

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The appeal of distributed generation is growing as the economics improve sharply, and a perfect storm of delayed infrastructure investment, falling prices for distributed renewable energy sources and a series of high profile centralized transmission grid failures mean the business is approaching a “tipping point.”

“We’re looking at a mass exodus away from the centralized utilities,” Gen110 Co-founder and CEO Jason Brown told Breaking Energy in a recent follow-up to an interview following a successful round of fund-raising by heavy-hitter venture capital firms earlier this year. Since the beginning of the year Gen110 has gone from being able to meet utility prices for electricity provision for one in ten homes to forecasting it will be able to match utility rates for three in ten by the end of this year. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 21, 2012 at 8:30 AM

Five Ways to Avert the Looming US Renewable Energy Crisis

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There is a looming renewable energy crisis, but it’s probably not the one you think. While national headlines over the past few months have focused on controversial federal loan guarantees, or the approaching expiration of key tax credits, the threat to renewable energy is much deeper than just these two areas.

Through Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), 29 states and the District of Columbia require electric utilities that supply power to their residents to obtain a specified percentage of their electricity from renewable energy sources by a specified date. For the last decade, RPS has been a resounding bipartisan success story, popular in both “red” and “blue” states alike. Today, they are the linchpin of our country’s investment in renewables, setting the requirement that a host of other public subsidies, including tax credits, are intended to support. Keep reading →

 /  Published June 21, 2012 at 10:30 AM

Army Renewable Energy Commitment is Serious: Hammack Details Program

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The commitment of the US military to renewable energy is serious, long-term and about guaranteeing energy security for missions, and it is not a short-term environmental program, the US Army’s energy and installations chief stressed today.

“I’m here to tell you that the Army is serious about this; this is not about environmentalism,” US Army Assistant Secretary for Installations, Energy and Environment Katherine Hammack said at the Renewable Energy Finance Forum – Wall Street in New York City today. Keep reading →

 /  Published June 19, 2012 at 11:50 AM

Smart Grid China: Latest Plan Shows Why China is Pulling Ahead

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A Chinese worker checking the power lines in Haikou, south China’s Hainan province.

China’s 12th Five Year Plan recently released by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) is, as we would expect, an ambitious initiative that affects several major industries and includes a commitment to several breakthroughs in key core technologies. Actually, ambitious may be an understatement. Keep reading →

 /  Published June 1, 2012 at 10:30 AM
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