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Just heard on the radio: community microgrid of interconnected solar users...

rin67630

rin67630

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I just heard on the radio about a community microgrid of solar power users on a small French island.
It looks quite interesting: About 100 solar houses got interconnected and are able to provide much more instantaneous power to users by sharing the overall power capacity.
This looks like quite an interesting concept, if you would extended it with some electric cars like the Nissan Leaf, that is able to back feed energy into the grid.
Have you got something similar to your knowledge?
 
Backfeeding from a car? Interesting but not the best option imho. At some point you might want to use the cars.
Gigawatt battery banks and grid inverters exist now, are being used now. All they need is a version of the huge utility-level setups as a surge buffer and overnight power might even be mini-grid possible.
 
12VoltInstalls said:
Backfeeding from a car? Interesting but not the best option imho. At some point you might want to use the cars.
Gigawatt battery banks and grid inverters exist now, are being used now. All they need is a version of the huge utility-level setups as a surge buffer and overnight power might even be mini-grid possible.
Click to expand...
IMHO back feeding from a car can make a lot of sense, especially with adaptive power prices.
If you plan not to use it for a while, because its your second car, or you are away for some time.
On that island, many owners do come for the week-end only: using their cars to stabilize the residential network is a blessing.
 
I suppose the key take-away here is "small island"...
You are always counting on the fact that everyone is a good steward of the collective power and nobody quick charges an electric car at the same time as anybody else or the entire thing collapses.

The "community" things can never scale because, well, there is ALWAYS somebody thats wants more out than they are putting in.
 
Not saying it couldn’t be beneficial. Maybe it would work fine?
I just view it like wind power: most places, wind is a benefit, but you have dino-fueled plants to sustain the grid when things aren’t windy.

A building with batteries and a couple huge inverters would be more dependable than when all the weekend residents all want to go to lunch on Saturday, it’s cloudy, and the grid crashes.
 
The concept works with smart meters and hourly prices for power depending on the demand.
It even makes sense to be member without any solar panel if you can have an anticyclic consumption.
 
The SolShare PDCS system manages use via micropayments tracked by the inverter control system itself and a mobile payments provider that is integrated. Presumably, users pay by the watt. Each unit only connects to a handful of other users, but apparently the software is able to handle the exchanges throughout the mesh.

It doesn't seem to be limited to just solar, so systems of batteries and generators (and fly wheels and hydro and that loon with the thousand degree liquid metal batter) and just end users all seem to be able to integrate.

The videos and docs don't really describe if or how the system keeps track of storage, or if it has any kind of dynamic behavior, or even much about the support software or its APIs.

Just speculating, but I would assume buying a little power to run LED lamps is a lot cheaper than a kerosene lantern. It would seem the real reward for a small locale is where individual users have extremely asynchronous demands. However, arbitrage does reward everyone to make investments in the network, and reduces the problem of overcoming that initial cost hurdle of a fully fledged system and engineering literacy that each individual would otherwise have to confront on their own.
 
Heh, what if I don't want to backfeed, and keep my battery healthy. Is there a penalty for not sharing? Who is the largest consumer of power? Would I feel comfortable subsidizing their power hogging use, by cycling my battery for them, while I live frugally?

On a tropical island - maybe. But it doesn't scale well socially. :)
 
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