Just 2 weeks ago I noted this little discussed feature of a renewable economy – resilience:
Here’s a little secret that Fox News does not get about renewable energy.
The image climate deniers would like to promote of the typical electric car/solar roof customer is that of the sandal wearing, tofu eating, lefty, socialist, green weenie. In fact, a good part of the early adopters are going to be from precisely the opposite end of the political spectrum. One of the major appeals of distributed generation, and the idea of producing one’s own energy, is the deeply embedded dislike and distrust Americans have for big business, big government, and big energy.
Tell the most hard core, right wing Tea Party member that there’s a way he or she can make their household more energy independent – more able to weather storms, blackouts, brownouts, or even terrorist attacks in a world of asymmetrical warfare, and they want to know more. This demographic is actually larger than the stereotypical green consumer.
Nissan is going to prove this with a new product rollout.
One more reason, now that the technology is here – renewable energy is unstoppable. With every new event like this, determination grows to build a grid that allows greater security, resilience, safety, and independence. Smart Grids and Renewables will rule, not because green is better, (tho it is) not because low carbon is better (tho it is), but because BETTER is better.
As the electricity grid becomes increasingly vulnerable to faults from equipment failure or willful attack, the risk of a major national scale grid failure is rising. Physicist Amory Lovins has said that following hundreds of blackouts in 2005, Cuba reorganized its electricity transmission system into networked microgrids and cut the occurrence of blackouts to zero within two years, limiting damage even after two hurricanes.[11] Networked island-able microgrids describes Lovins’ vision where energy is generated locally from solar power, wind power and other resources and used by super-efficient buildings. When each building, or neighborhood, is generating its own power, with links to other “islands” of power, the security of the entire network is greatly enhanced.[11]
My grid-tied PV system in El Paso, TX cannot function if the power grid goes down. Wonder if this is common?
Often times, a disconnect switch and some form of anti-island detection is used in order to determine when the grid goes down and open the disconnect switch.
Without the switch to isolate your system, you create an island of electrically live lines that the utility company may need to do repair work on.
The setup I described is pretty common.