#James Scott grid stability | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

envirotechaccelerator · 1 year

Text

Microgrids: Building Resilient And Sustainable Energy Systems

by Envirotech Accelerator

Abstract

Microgrids represent a promising solution to the challenges of energy resilience, sustainability, and access. This article delves into the workings of microgrids, their benefits, and potential applications, highlighting their significance in shaping a more sustainable future.

Introduction

Microgrids are localized energy systems capable of operating independently from the main power grid. James Scott, founder of the Envirotech Accelerator, posits, “Microgrids are not just a technological advancement; they are a paradigm shift, ushering in a new era of decentralized, resilient, and sustainable energy systems.” This article explores the characteristics of microgrids, their advantages, and their potential to revolutionize energy infrastructure.

Microgrid Components and Operation

Microgrids consist of diverse elements, including power generation sources, energy storage systems, and distribution networks (Lasseter & Paigi, 2004). They can incorporate renewable energy, such as solar or wind, along with conventional generators, and utilize batteries or other storage technologies. Microgrids use advanced control systems to manage energy supply and demand, ensuring stable and efficient operation.

Benefits of Microgrids

Resilience: Microgrids improve energy system resilience by maintaining power supply during grid disruptions or extreme weather events (Erol-Kantarci & Mouftah, 2015). Their decentralized nature reduces the risk of widespread outages, enhancing overall grid stability.

Sustainability: Incorporating renewable energy sources, microgrids can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reliance on fossil fuels. They also promote energy efficiency, as localized generation reduces transmission losses.

Access: Microgrids can provide energy access to remote or off-grid communities, enabling socioeconomic development and improved quality of life (Palit & Chaurey, 2011).

Applications of Microgrids

Remote Communities: Microgrids can bring electricity to isolated areas, replacing costly and polluting diesel generators with clean, renewable energy.

Disaster Response: In disaster-affected regions, microgrids can rapidly restore power, supporting critical services and facilitating recovery efforts.

Industrial and Commercial Facilities: Microgrids can ensure reliable power supply for energy-intensive operations, reducing downtime and improving efficiency.

Conclusion

Microgrids offer a transformative approach to energy generation and distribution, enhancing resilience, sustainability, and access. By embracing microgrid technology, we can foster a more decentralized and robust energy infrastructure, laying the foundation for a sustainable future.

References

Erol-Kantarci, M., & Mouftah, H. T. (2015). Energy efficiency in smart grids: A survey. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 17(4), 2312–2335.

Lasseter, R. H., & Paigi, P. (2004, October). Microgrid: A conceptual solution. In PESC Record. IEEE 35th Annual Power Electronics Specialists Conference, 2004. (Vol. 6, pp. 4285–4290). IEEE.

Palit, D., & Chaurey, A. (2011). Off-grid rural electrification experiences from South Asia: Status and best practices. Energy for Sustainable Development, 15(3), 266–276.

Read more at Envirotech Accelerator.

#James Scott #Envirotech Accelerator #James Scott microgrids #Envirotech Accelerator energy resilience #James Scott sustainable energy systems #Envirotech Accelerator microgrid applications #James Scott decentralized energy #Envirotech Accelerator renewable integration #James Scott energy access #Envirotech Accelerator smart grids #James Scott grid stability #Envirotech Accelerator energy efficiency

0 notes

twiststreet · 7 years

Text

Oh Boy! Indie RPGS I love 'em and I'm going to talk your ear off about them. The key thing to understand about RPGs of any stripe is that they don't make money, or they barely make enough money. Every publisher is at 2d cloud or Picturebox levels of financial stability, some aspire to be a Fantagraphics. D&D is what ever vestigial bits of the Hasbro organisation can lend to keep the IP relevant and in control of the parent organisation (its punishment duty).

So RPGs don't make money, every publisher is a failure away from murder/suicide (even Wizards of The Coast, look up why the fourth edition failed to achieve its aims). But they require a tonne of effort to make well, it's essentially a novel you not only have to proof read but also bug fix, and RPGs don't pay well, because they don't make money. So anyone with any sense is in Video Games. RPG writing/publishing is a form of obscurity and financial insolvency that comics can only dream of.

But there are people still doing the good work. Here are a few of them:

Jenna Moran does work that pushes the boundary of what's possible. She has incredibly specific tone that's hard to capture. Her work is always interested in being singular, transcendent and liberartory. Check out "wisher theurgist fatalist",Nobilis, and Chuubo's Magical Wish Granting Engine.

Avery Adler (sometimes you might find her work under her dead name McDonaldo), she does stuff about communities of disparate people having together. In the case of brilliant and beautiful A Quiet Year, a post-apocalyptic society, in the case of Monster Hearts, shitty monster teens like a CW show . She 's hot shit enough that comics' master of shitty teens Kieron Gillen added his spin to the second edition of Monster Hearts.

Emily Care Boss: She writes great RPGs emphasising personal relationships. The Romance Trilogy is her latest, she's also active as a theorist. Check out Play With Intent as well, which the authors made more polite unfortunately because nobody loves policing tone more than the RPG community.

Luke Crane: Talking about tone policing, perhaps nobody has received as much shit for how he expresses himself as Luke Crane. His mechanics have always been brilliant but the first edition of his game The Burning Wheel voiced them very strongly. In response the Kickstarter for the latest edition was done completely in character as a wizard, shit heads couldn't do anything but endlessly complain because he fulfilled all his promises. He is head of Kickstarter games.

Robin D Laws: One of the best structural theorists on RPGs, he has a number of interesting games and books out. Robin's Guide to Game Mastering is still considered good advice. Hamlet's Hit Points is an attempt to do a story structure analysis of RPG play. His game Hillfolk is about putting it into action. He's done lots and lots of good stuff, including the Dying Earth game. He also does a podcast with RPG theory elements.

Greg Stolze: Pound for Pound one of the best combination ideas/design guys in RPGs. Not only do his games sound interesting, they play well. Infamous for asking a question at White Wolf about how the mechanics actually effected dice roll chance. Recently released the third edition of the fantastic Unknown Armies (essentially Twin Peaks the game, at least a little), look up the co-creator John Scott Tynes for some real interesting shit as well.

Gareth Ryder Hanrahann: Probably the best scenario/adventure designer going at the moment. Hits: The Pirates of Drinax, The Darkening of Mirkwood, and the magisterial Dracula Dossier.

James Wallis: This guy can't write to a deadline but his RPGs are good. Alas Vegas has rave reviews and an interesting structure. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen acts as a theory text in its own right.

But you're not actually interested in RPGs you're interested in stories for computer games. In that case I recommend Emily Short who has years worth of writing and criticism on her blog, James Ryan has been doing good research, Tanya X Short of Kitfox Games has some stuff out that's good, Video Games for Humans is a good collection criticism, I mentioned Robin D Laws before, he wrote for King of Dragon Pass which is highly regarded. Inkle is doing good work/theory and Jon Ingold goes way back.

In terms of Drama, indie RPGs don't have much, people generally work with each others games and engine all the time, but Zak Sabbath is one of its flashpoints. He moves in circles which is a lot like the Alamo Drafthouse guys, you hear a few warnings about past behaviour, and there's a lot of male dominated skeeviness dressed up as transgressive content, there's also been some plausible deniable harassment, certainly in person not many have a problem with him. Oh and check out Bundle of Holding.

-- I got this in my Asks since I mentioned the Indie RPG scene and a game from that scene called Deep Carbon Observatory the other day in passing (Indie RPGs are like that game D&D, but all indie, like that band Interpol). It seemed pretty thorough, so putting it here in case anyone else might be interested in this topic. A great thanks to its author, who is anonymous and wants to stay off the Grid, just like poor Johnny Mnemonic, the titular character from the hit movie of the same name.

#Man is the Deadliest Game.#rpg

16 notes · View notes

justsimplylovely · 4 years

Link

(Bloomberg) -- Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, under fire for his climate policies amid a devastating bushfire season, announced a A$2 billion ($1.3 billion) energy deal with the country’s most populous state on Friday that will seek to reduce emissions and lower power bills.The federal government will provide as much as A$1 billion in funding to clean energy initiatives, jointly underwrite investment in two new interstate transmission links to bolster grid stability, and support new generation projects in New South Wales. In return, the state government committed to facilitating investment into gas supply into the east coast market and ensuring coal supplies to its biggest power plant until 2042.The deal may buy the premier some breathing space from the backlash over the bushfires, which scientists have warned are likely to become more extreme as a result of climate change. Still, industry analysts see the package as a costly way to tackle the issue that could serve to crowd out private investment.“Doing negotiated bilateral deals between governments is a very strange way to run an energy market,” said Tony Wood, energy program director at the Grattan Institute think tank. “This is what you do when you can’t, or you’ve chosen not to, have a policy to steer the industry toward lower emissions in an efficient way.”Morrison’s center-right government has steadfastly refused to bring in a carbon pricing mechanism, a step many in the industry see as the lowest cost way to bring about the transition to cleaner energy. Meanwhile, a plan to underwrite generation has been criticized for favoring projects, potentially deterring investment in alternative ways of boosting grid capacity.By prioritizing more gas supply the deal would “lock in higher power prices, reduced reliability and higher emissions for New South Wales,” climate-focused policy think tank Australia Institute said in a Twitter post, adding that renewable power was already cheaper than gas.New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian said developing Santos Ltd.’s Narrabri coal seam gas resource was one option to meet the state’s supply commitment. Narrabri, which has been the subject of strong environmental protests, is going through the state’s approvals process, with a final decision expected in the first quarter of 2020. Berejiklian added that there were other options, including two projects being developed to import gas from overseas.The Morrison government has championed gas as a transition fuel from coal to renewables, and pushed for states including New South Wales and Victoria to ease restrictions on developing new resources.Morrison’s deal with New South Wales may at least sketch out the beginnings of an energy strategy, Wood said. Given the prime minister is hamstrung by his party on stronger climate targets, “the clever way out is to start to find some projects that he can work on with the states” that would have some impact on emissions reduction and fill the policy vacuum, he said.To contact the reporter on this story: James Thornhill in Sydney at [email protected] contact the editors responsible for this story: Ramsey Al-Rikabi at [email protected], Rob Verdonck, Aaron ClarkFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3b0Y9og

#Blogger

0 notes

worldviraltrending · 4 years

Link

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3b0Y9og

#Blogger

0 notes

beautytipsfor · 4 years

Text

Australia PM Seeks to Contain Bushfire Fallout With Energy Deal

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3b0Y9og via Beauty Tips

from Blogger https://ift.tt/3aZWlff

#Blogger

0 notes

sweatygardencollectorblr · 4 years

Link

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3b0Y9og

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes

batenchantingcollectorsong · 4 years

Link

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3b0Y9og

#Blogger

0 notes

saadullah-faisal-world · 4 years

Link

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3b0Y9og

#Blogger

0 notes

sonicmakers · 5 years

Text

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: DOING, KNOWING, MEETING [08.02.19]

As part of our recent forum at the RMA2018 annual conference, we invited composer Scott McLaughlin to respond to three conceptual threads with reference to his own making: DOING, KNOWING, and MEETING. A full text of Scott’s contribution can be read below.

What is it to make?

I make to follow my fascination with revealing phenomena of sound in time, especially those non-linear phenomena wherein the agency of the human performer cedes some level of control to the material, the ‘thingly’ agency of the object that sounds. My fascination begins with ways that complex patterns can emerge from simple interactions. How these patterns are expressed on different scales of perception and structure: articulated through the spectral, the gestural, and the spatial. The way that these phenomena house a wealth of ambiguities, perceptual nooks and crannies which afford a decentered practice of open-ended exploration.

To ‘make’ can be to design an environment for interaction. This requires some understanding of the forces in play, and what philosopher of science Andrew Pickering refers to as a ‘tuning’ of the ‘field of powers, capacities, and performances’. This tuning is certainly helped by knowledge of the instruments and their physics, but it is mostly a process of mixing tacit knowledge (obtained by doing) with observation and reflection, to make elements of this knowledge explicit. To ‘make’ is to develop techniques and epistemic objects (see Rheinberger or Knorr-Cetina) which are in-themselves tools for further making. To ‘make’ can also be to limit, categorise, highlight, draw-out, and reveal; to ask questions of the material and the interactions; to critically suspend the system of interactions such that its energy is constrained to flow in certain ways which are circumscribed but open-ended. In my work, I like to evoke the model from physics of the ‘strange attractor’, where walking the same path produces an endless parade of outputs that are different-but-the-same, always tending towards the ‘basin’ of the attractor but never quite reaching it. The attractor basin in my work is often the resonant contours of the material, its characteristic response to energy input, how it shapes the energy of it being ‘performed’. My work focusses on the material’s preferences, and tries not to override this resonance (e.g. by quantizing it to stave notation’s traditional grid of pitch and time), but rather allows the music to be formed out of the interactions of these resonances, to expose the non-linear and surf the emergent structures.

What is it your work is made from?

My work is made from interaction and constraint: the interaction of agencies, constrained by a score (usually a prose score). In most cases, my composition focusses on how a material object responds to human agency in ways that are more-or-less unpredictable, and how the interaction between this ‘material agency’ and the human agency can make and break patterns of sound and action in time. Other times, my work looks at resonances in the social, the interactions of people who follow instructions that are open but constrained; balancing personal predilections and interpretations with the constraints of instruction and (material) context.

As an example from my work. My 2016 piece The endless mobility of listening—developed with Mira Benjamin for violin and live electronics—has two interacting constraints that form the piece: (a) the requirement to bow open-strings in such a way that the fundamental is suppressed and other partials of the string emerge; (b) the requirement to prefer (or ‘aim for’) partials that sound at B5 -14c (5th partial of the open G string). The material agency of the string means that the specific emergent partials are difficult to predict—although they become more knowable with experience, they are never entirely predictable—while the human agency is directed not at controlling which partial emerges but at (a) exploring the variety of the material agency (‘what might it produce? how can I facilitate rich interaction?��), and (b) encouraging stability in the partials that do emerge (following that principle of improvisation that players should ‘accept every offer’). As the strings are detuned in each subsequent section, the material agency of the string changes, expressed as a changing landscape of preferred sounding partials. And what have you come to know about that which it is made from?

Through working with the materials I gain an understanding of their preferences (and the variance of these), of where their tipping points might lie, and what forces are amenable to them. Composition—for me at least—is a friendship with materials.

Scott Mc Laughlin is a composer and free-improviser (cello, live electronics) based in Huddersfield, UK. Born in Ireland (Co. Clare) in 1975, he wanted to be a scientist but instead spent his early 20s playing guitar in art-indie bands between Galway and Belfast. Slowly he discovered more experimental non-pop musics, leading to a foundation course and subsequent BMus degree in music at the University of Ulster at Jordanstown, completed in 2001. Somewhere between that and completing his PhD at the University of Huddersfield in 2009, he reconnected with science via music, with the help of supervisors Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, Bryn Harrison, James Saunders, and Christopher Fox. Currently he teaches composition and music-technology at University of Leeds, and still enjoys reverb-drenched feedback.

0 notes

stopkingobama · 7 years

Text

Obama's radical Green Regime still commands the Pentagon

Photo: Pixabay (CC0)

As Congress considers green projects in a military spending bill, the Trump administration hasn’t staked out a strong case on whether to roll back the Obama administration’s aggressive push for biofuels, wind, solar, and other renewables in the military.

“The Pentagon has bought into climate change because it makes it politically more acceptable,” @myronebell says.

During his confirmation hearing Tuesday, Trump nominee for Navy secretary, Richard V. Spencer, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he was watchful of climate change. The committee unanimously approved Spencer.

“The Navy, from my briefings to date, is totally aware of rising water issues, storm issues, etc.,” Spencer said. “We must protect our infrastructure, and I will work hard to make sure we are keeping an eye on that because without the infrastructure, we lose readiness.”

This week, the House debated the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2018. Last month, the Republican-controlled House Armed Services Committee passed an amendment by Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., directing the Defense Department to assess 10 bases in each branch most threatened by climate change, and for the Pentagon to count climate change as a security risk to deal with—even as several government audits in the last two years have found the alternative energy sources haven’t been efficient for the DOD.

A 2015 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental advocacy and research group, warned that 128 U.S. military bases could be submerged because of rising sea levels.

Reps. Scott Perry, R-Pa., and Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, each sponsored their own amendments to strike the Langevin provision. Perry’s proposal would remove the language to save money for the Pentagon, while Davidson’s amendment would strike down a 2015 executive order by President Barack Obama that requires the military to meet emission reduction targets.

However, neither of the Republicans’ amendments will likely make it to the floor despite clearing the rules committee, said Myron Ebell, director for the Center for Energy and the Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

“There are problems at the Pentagon and in Congress,” Ebell, who served on President Donald Trump’s transition team, told The Daily Signal. “President Trump signed an executive order that got rid of some green energy programs at the Pentagon, but others are left in place.”

Trump signed an order rescinding Obama’s Executive Order 13653 directing the Department of Defense and other departments to use resources to prepare for the impact of climate change. However, Trump hasn’t rescinded this executive order, which the amendment Davidson is offering would undo, Ebell noted.

“The Pentagon has bought into climate change because it makes it politically more acceptable to people who wouldn’t normally like the Pentagon,” Ebell said. “Another reason is that it’s another means to enhance the portfolio and receive more funding, even if it’s not part of the essential mission.”

One of the nation’s leading environmental groups expressed frustration over the two House Republicans’ proposals.

“Apparently there is no limit to what some Republican members of Congress like Reps. Scott [Perry] and Davidson are prepared to do to wipe away reality, consequences be damned,” Liz Perera, a policy director for the Sierra Club, said in a statement. “Some House Republicans think they know more about climate science than actual scientists, and, amazingly, more about how to protect our troops and military bases than the Pentagon. This kind of blind arrogance endangers the health of our families and the security of our nation.”

Navy Cmdr. Patrick L. Evans, a Pentagon spokesman, referenced some of the existing policies and told The Daily Signal, “not to my knowledge,” when asked if there would be significant changes under the Trump administration regarding renewable energy rules across military branches.

Already, Obama-era mandates linger.

Title 10 of U.S. Code Section 2911 states that 25 percent of Department of Defense facility energy use be generated by renewable energy sources by 2025 and it would take an act of Congress to reverse this.

However, most policies are administrative, said Rachel Zissimos, a research associate for national security and defense studies at The Heritage Foundation.

This includes Obama’s 2011 directive that the Navy and other departments and agencies “work with private industry to create advanced drop-in biofuels that [would] power both the Department of Defense and private sector transportation throughout America.”

Obama’s Navy Secretary Ray Mabus also touted the “Great Green Fleet.” The name is derived from the “Great White Fleet,” the U.S. Navy battle fleet President Theodore Roosevelt ordered to travel the globe and demonstrate American military prowess.

In 2015, the Department of Defense issued a report on the unrest climate change could cause. In a statement about the report, the department said:

The Department of Defense’s primary responsibility is to protect national security interests around the world. This involves considering all aspects of the global security environment and planning appropriately for potential contingencies and the possibility of unexpected developments both in the near and the longer terms. … It is in this context that the department must consider the effects of climate change—such as sea level rise, shifting climate zones, and more frequent and intense severe weather events—and how these effects could impact national security.

In September 2016, the Government Accountability Office found that of 17 renewable energy programs in the Department of Defense, only two provided power in case of a grid outage. The other programs were costly, and the department’s spending on renewable energy went up by 60 percent from 2014 to 2015, according to the audit.

A separate Government Accountability Office study in July 2015 found the department still spends far more on traditional gasoline for fuels, but gets a better bargain per gallon than with alternatives.

The Pentagon paid $58.6 million for 2 million gallons of alternative fuel from 2007 to 2014—which would be about $29 per gallon for alternatives. Conversely, over that same time, the department spent $107.2 billion for 32 billion of petroleum, which would only be $3 per gallon.

A Department of Defense comptroller general’s report in February 2016 found that the cost of environmental compliance increased by more than $119 million from the previous fiscal year.

During his Senate confirmation, Defense Secretary James Mattis said in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee that “climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today. It is appropriate for the Combatant Commands to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning.”

When serving as the commanding general of the 1st Marine Division during the second Iraq War, Mattis said the Department of Defense should “unleash us from the tether of fuel.”

Mattis wasn’t advocating addressing alternative fuels because of climate change, but rather because of the cost of transporting fuel, Zissimos said.

“The biggest cost for fuel is transportation, delivery, and storage,” Zissimos told The Daily Signal. “Operations are primarily overseas. A huge investment in biofuels will not reduce that cost because they will still need to be transported overseas.”

#Environmentalism

0 notes

americanlibertypac · 7 years

Text

Obama's radical Green Regime still commands the Pentagon

Photo: Pixabay (CC0)

“The Pentagon has bought into climate change because it makes it politically more acceptable,” @myronebell says.

A 2015 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental advocacy and research group, warned that 128 U.S. military bases could be submerged because of rising sea levels.

One of the nation’s leading environmental groups expressed frustration over the two House Republicans’ proposals.

Already, Obama-era mandates linger.

However, most policies are administrative, said Rachel Zissimos, a research associate for national security and defense studies at The Heritage Foundation.

In 2015, the Department of Defense issued a report on the unrest climate change could cause. In a statement about the report, the department said:

A Department of Defense comptroller general’s report in February 2016 found that the cost of environmental compliance increased by more than $119 million from the previous fiscal year.

When serving as the commanding general of the 1st Marine Division during the second Iraq War, Mattis said the Department of Defense should “unleash us from the tether of fuel.”

Mattis wasn’t advocating addressing alternative fuels because of climate change, but rather because of the cost of transporting fuel, Zissimos said.

#Environmentalism

0 notes

therightnewsnetwork · 7 years

Text

Most of Obama’s Green Policies Persist at Department of Defense

“The Pentagon has bought into climate change because it makes it politically more acceptable,” @myronebell says.

During his confirmation hearing Tuesday, Trump nominee for Navy secretary, Richard V. Spencer told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he was watchful of climate change. The committee unanimously approved Spencer.

This week, the House has debated the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2018. Last month, the Republican-controlled House Armed Services Committee passed an amendment by Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., directing the Defense Department to assess 10 bases in each branch most threatened by climate change, and for the Pentagon to count climate change as a security risk to deal with—even as several government audits in the last two years have found the alternative energy sources haven’t been efficient for the DOD.

A 2015 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental advocacy and research group, warned that 128 U.S. military bases could be submerged because of rising sea levels.

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., and Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, each sponsored their own amendments to strike the Langevin provision. Perry’s proposal would remove the language to save money for the Pentagon, while Davidson’s amendment would strike down a 2015 executive order by President Barack Obama that requires the military to meet emission reduction targets.

Trump signed an order rescinding Obama’s Executive Order 13653 directing the Department of Defense and other departments to use resources to prepare for the impact of climate change. However, Trump hasn’t rescinded this executive order, which is the amendment Davidson is offering would undo, Ebell noted.

One of the nation’s leading environmental groups expressed frustration over the two House Republicans’ proposals.

“Apparently there is no limit to what some Republican members of Congress like Reps. Scott [Perry] and Davidson are prepared to do to wipe away reality, consequences be damned,” Liz Perera, policy director for the Sierra Club, said in a statement. “Some House Republicans think they know more about climate science than actual scientists, and, amazingly, more about how to protect our troops and military bases than the Pentagon. This kind of blind arrogance endangers the health of our families and the security of our nation.”

Already, Obama-era mandates linger.

Title 10 of the U.S. Code Section 2911 states that 25 percent of Department of Defense facility energy use be generated by renewable energy sources by 2025 and it would take an act of Congress to reverse this.

However, most policies are administrative, said Rachel Zissimos, a research associate for national security and defense studies at The Heritage Foundation.

In 2015, the Department of Defense issued a report on the unrest climate change could cause. In a statement about the report, the department said:

The Department of Defense’s primary responsibility is to protect national security interests around the world. This involves considering all aspects of the global security environment and planning appropriately for potential contingencies and the possibility of unexpected developments both in the near and the longer terms. … It is in this context that the department must consider the effects of climate change — such as sea level rise, shifting climate zones, and more frequent and intense severe weather events — and how these effects could impact national security.

A Department of Defense comptroller general’s report in February 2016 found that the cost of environmental compliance increased by more than $119 million from the previous fiscal year.

During his Senate confirmation, Defense Secretary James Mattis said in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee that, “Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today. It is appropriate for the Combatant Commands to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning.”

When serving as the commanding general of the First Marine Division during the second Iraq war, Mattis said the Department of Defense should, “unleash us from the tether of fuel.”

Mattis wasn’t advocating addressing alternative fuels because of climate change, but rather because of the cost of transporting fuel, Zissimos said.

The post Most of Obama’s Green Policies Persist at Department of Defense appeared first on The Daily Signal.

from http://www.therightnewsnetwork.com/most-of-obamas-green-policies-persist-at-department-of-defense/

0 notes

inerginc · 7 years

Link

GTM Smart Grid http://ift.tt/2eJlQnQ

Pulling a cohesive narrative out of the DistribuTech conference’s thousands of participants and menagerie of electrical doohickeys is like synopsizing James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Among the cacophany, though, a few trends emerged. The sophistication of software to manage an increasingly decentralized grid continues to grow, as Jeff St. John observed. Meanwhile, utility representatives expressed caution about the dislocations stemming from that decentralization.

"Our main charge is to make sure our customers have reliable power," said James Boston, manager of market intelligence at San Antonio utility CPS Energy, which recently deployed a demonstration microgrid. "Utilities are generally cautious to make sure these things are tested, are proven, before we put customers’ reliability in any type of jeopardy."

A spot of optimism from both utilities and grid edge enthusiasts appeared in the form of microgrids.

In the last few years, the drop in prices for solar photovoltaics and energy storage, the arrival of advanced grid-forming inverters, and the impacts of solar penetration on the flow of electrons through the grid have made microgrids more cost effective and attractive.

“Ten years ago, resiliency was the only reason you would buy a microgrid, because the energy would cost too much to create -- it would never be cheaper than a grid,” said Mark Feasel, vice president of smart grid at Schneider Electric. “Now with PV and CHP with natural gas, in many states you can generate energy cheaper than you can buy it.”

Cheap technology, though, is not sufficient to usher in the age of the microgrid.

“The challenge is on the commercial side,” said Ken Horne, director for smart grid at Navigant, in a panel at DistribuTech. “Not all value streams from these investments are readily monetizable.”

Now, more than ever before, utilities and other energy companies are experimenting with those business models. Many models are emerging, but three distinct concepts stood out at the conference: microgrids to defer transmission and distribution costs, microgrids as a service to a customer, and microgrids developed for both customer and grid-wide benefit.

Not surprisingly, utilities tend to like microgrids when they can own them, control them and recover their costs through the rate base. If the commercial microgrid-as-service model takes off, though, it could usher in a broad deployment of this technology without asking ratepayers to put their money on the line.

Utility-owned distribution microgrids

San Diego Gas and Electric delivers power to the town of Borrego Springs via a single radial transmission line running through the desert. Lightning strikes and desert flash floods threaten that line, resulting in historically poor reliability, Chief Engineer Thomas Bialek explained at the DistribuTech panel.

The utility needed to maintain or improve reliability for the nearly 2,800 Borrego Springs customers, but the traditional fix, building out a parallel transmission line, was pricey. A microgrid would be three or four times cheaper, Bialek said. So that’s what they did.

The system, paid for by SDG&E, the Department of Energy and other partners, combines diesel generators, large and small batteries and rooftop solar PV.

SDG&E's microgrid kept the desert town of Borrego Springs powered during a flash flood-induced outage. (SDG&E)

The microgrid has already proven itself in the face of adversity. When a flash flood in September 2013 downed transmission poles and lines leading to the town, the microgrid fired up and restored power to 1,056 customers while the grid repairs unfolded. That covered the core city center, so that those residents who didn't have power yet could move to central facilities for shelter from the heat.

In this use case, the microgrid doesn’t challenge or complicate the utility’s role -- it helps achieve the core mission of reliability for all customers, however remote.

“If they were redoing from scratch all the rural electric cooperatives, I doubt they would build all those miles and miles of lines,” Bialek said.

Up in metropolitan Toronto, distribution utility PowerStream had a similar conundrum. It powers a remote town called Penetanguishene well north of Toronto, fed by very long transmission lines under threat from storms and snow.

“When we tried to improve reliability in this town where reliability was historically poor, we thought, ‘We could put out more conventional assets to solve the problem or we could do something more innovative,’” said Shuvo Chowdhury, smart grid project lead at the utility.

They decided to test whether a microgrid really could defer a traditional grid investment. The installation took a year from detailed design to deployment and commissioning, and includes a 500 kilowatt-hour lithiuim-ion battery from Samsung SDI with an advanced microgrid controller and 750 kilovolt-ampere inverter.

The microgrid can island and run the town for 42 minutes, considerably longer than the usual outage of 10 minutes. When an outage is not expected, the battery can earn some revenue by arbitraging from cheap to expensive generation.

“The major play is for resiliency, but most of time you don’t use it for that,” Chowdhury said. “We’ve had a very mild winter, so we haven’t had as many outages. Not that I’m asking for some…”

There is still work to be done, then, to optimize the design of such a system for return on investment. It’s one thing to prove a microgrid is cheaper than wires upgrades, and it’s another to design and operate it in a way that pays for itself most quickly.

Microgrid-as-a-service

A different model is emerging to give customers access to microgrid service while shielding them from risk. This approach adopts the power purchase agreement model from the solar industry to sell microgrids as a service.

Schneider Electric will be supplying one of these microgrids at the public safety headquarters and correctional facility in Montgomery County, Maryland, the company announced Wednesday.

Under this structure, Duke Energy’s renewables arm will own and operate the microgrid. Montgomery County will pay a 25-year PPA for the energy created onsite as well as the secure power for the critical facilities in the event of an outage. Schneider connected the customer with the investor and supplies about half of the equipment that Duke will purchase to construct the setup.

Duke has plenty of experience developing renewable energy and maintaining electrical infrastructure, and a big enough balance sheet to absorb a large up-front investment.

“For the past 10 years, Duke Energy Renewables has been successful selling wind and solar power through power purchase agreements, so we extended that model to the Montgomery County microgrid project, meeting the customer’s need for reliability, security and affordability,” said spokesperson Tammie McGee.

Montgomery County has a triple-A credit rating, but limited expertise in the construction of microgrids, not to mention limited budget for capital investment and maintenance.

Thus, Duke can trust the county to pay incrementally over the next 25 years for resilience, energy cost stability and expanded renewables. The structure avoids the risk of using taxpayer dollars to buy the emerging technology itself.

“Not only are we preparing for outages, but these facilities are in a better condition for day-to-day operations,” said Eric Coffman, Montgomery County chief of energy and sustainability, tuning in virtually to a launch event at the conference.

In this case, the local government is the customer, but ratepayers themselves don’t bear the cost or risk of the installation. Duke owns the assets as a private investor, the county pays for service. It’s easy to see how this model would work for commercial and industrial applications.

It also carries implications for the equitable improvement of the grid.

“If this works out in some commercial arrangement, why should we put that in the rate base and hope the business model works?” said Feasel, Schneider’s smart grid leader. “Because eventually, if it doesn't work, poor grandma in public housing is going to pay more, and that's not fair.”

In the pay-for-service model, he continued, the customer pays the agreed upon amount, the developer makes sure everything works, and if something breaks the suppliers have to replace it. Ratepayers are not on the hook for any of that.

Serve one customer and many

Elsewhere, though, utilities are exploring ways to build out microgrids with partial ratepayer support.

The general model derives from the dual nature of most microgrids as both a local, independent service and a grid-tied resource. In the partially rate-based model, the utility builds a customer-sited microgrid in a place where resilience is in high demand, but uses some of the assets for broader grid services when the customer doesn’t need backup.

The customer pays for its expected use of the facility, and the utility asks its public utilities commission for permission to recover costs from the grid-serving portion of the project.

Arizona Public Service has undertaken two such projects, using diesel generators rather than solar and storage. One is at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, the other is at Aligned Data Center, going up in Phoenix. Data centers place a premium on uninterrupted power, so APS used the microgrid as a way to attract the center to its territory.

The host customers contribute based on their expected usage of the facility, said Scott Bordenkircher, APS director of transmission and distribution technology innovation and integration. When those facilities don't need backup power, though,the microgrids can serve the broader grid with peaking energy, frequency response, voltage regulation and spinning reserve. The utility is asking for cost recovery based on the stacked values the microgrids provide for ratepayers at large.

"I've got to do these certain things anyways, now I can do them with this, what's that look like from a cost comparison standpoint?" Bordenkircher said of the decision making process. "In fact, it's far cheaper using the microgrid generation than it is through other means."

This is one of those calculations that makes sense in principle but could get tricky when it comes to divvying up the costs in real world situations. The microgrids are up and running, but APS is still waiting to hear back from regulators on the rate case that would reimburse the grid side of the projects.

A rendering depicts the futuristic aerotropolis development Peña Station Next, where Panasonic's new office will host a microgrid (City and County of Denver).

Over in Colorado, utility Xcel Energy has partnered with the city Denver and Panasonic to create a $10.3 million microgrid in Peña Station Next, a “smart city” development under construction near the airport.

Panasonic is anchoring the new development with an office to house the operations center for its nationwide network of utility-scale solar installations. Such a facility needs to run at all times. Meanwhile, Xcel was looking to improve grid reliability in the area and brace for a feeder heading toward 30 percent solar penetration. The company had received permission from the public utility commission to recover costs for testing energy storage on the grid, making the deal even more attractive.

Peter Bronski with Panasonic's marketing and content strategy team described the project as “a microgrid with fuzzy boundaries,” because the components don’t all live within the fence the way one might expect.

The microgrid includes 1.6 megawatts of solar owned and operated by Xcel but installed on a carport at Denver International Airport. Panasonic is footing the bill for 259 kilowatts of solar PV on its own roof and will host the 1 megawatt/ 2 megawatt-hour lithium-ion battery from Younicos. That battery is located in front of the meter, but on Panasonic's side of the islanding switch.

The partnership, then, leverages private land and funding to deploy equipment with the potential to help the broader grid. Panasonic will enjoy an estimated four hours of backup for its critical facilities. The utility gets solar integration, grid peak demand reduction, energy price arbitrage and frequency regulation.

The partners will watch and learn how the batteries work for two years, testing the ability of the battery to stack different jobs in real life. After that study period, Xcel and Panasonic will finalize a more formal agreement for use and payment for the rest of the battery’s life.

It's also possible to do this sort of project without a rate case. CPS used company funds to construct a demonstration microgrid at Fort Sam Houston in Joint Base San Antonio, to operate with analytics funded by a National Renewable Energy Laboratory grant. The company chose a library as the project site, to gain experience with real usage patterns without putting any critical operations on the line just yet.

That approach doesn't constitute a business model per se, but it's a way to develop early microgrids and figure out sustainable business models down the road.

Where next?

Several microgrids have arrived, then, but microgrids as a class are still in a state of arriving. This class of project has entered the grid and started carrying real loads, but the examples discussed here still serve an exploratory purpose, gathering data for a better understanding of how they can work in the future.

Given the diversity of markets and customers, it's reasonable to expect no one model will win out. The sources interviewed for this story agreed that the microgrid market is still in its infancy, and a thriving market for this asset won't arrive for perhaps five or 10 years.

In some cases, regulatory policies will impose constraints, particularly where utilities are barred from owning distribution and generation, and where storage is classified as the latter. The precedent set by the Arizona Corporation Commission in the APS rate case will also be a sign of the viability of the hybrid model for leveraging private and public capital.

It is noteworthy that utilities are not shying away from this type of grid experiment. Utility representatives repeatedly dismissed the idea that a proliferation of microgrids could catalyze a death spiral like the one once expected from distributed solar generation. They're not worried about grid defection from customers who can run their own miniature grids.

Part of that is logistical. For secure, nonstop power, localized generators would run into air permit issues, and solar-plus-storage still requires a big upfront expenditure, said APS's Bordenkircher.

"I don't see [a microgrid] as becoming my 24/7 power source of choice," he said. "It's going to provide a secondary service that I need, not a primary service."

It's cost effective to run a microgrid on grid power most of the time, and island it in an emergency; to achieve full independence drives the costs up fast.

Additionally, microgrids offer utilities a new source of revenue, especially welcome as traditional utility business models face changes in the years ahead.

The skills required to design and operate a microgrid -- electrical engineering, grid balancing and the like -- are already areas where utilities specialize, noted David Chiesa, who watches over S&C Electric Company's microgrid market segment as senior director of business development.

Meanwhile, distributed solar and energy storage are spreading on their own steam and complicating the business of grid operation, as seen on the feeder where Xcel is building the microgrid. Microgrids offer a way to compartmentalize these distributed resources and mitigate their effects on the grid at large, before things get out of hand.

"Why do you think they’re experimenting with it now?" Chiesa said.

To really enable a utility-driven microgrid market to flourish, microgrid design will need to become more standardized, he added.

"If you look at microgrids today, they're all perfect little snowflakes," Chiesa said. "That's anathema to fleetwide management... Utilities are going to want their microgrids to look more like a fleet."

Several pathways forward have become clear. Microgrid developers need to log more hours of run time and shave the costs of designing and building. But they've got an essential crowd pleaser on their hands: A product that combines the safety and reliability of traditional grid architecture with the control and flexibility of distributed energy.

#Micro-grids #GTM Smart Grid

0 notes

sweatygardencollectorblr · 4 years

Link

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3b0Y9og

#Blogger

0 notes