A recent study examined microgrids from an economic perspective and discovered that they may not always be a wise economic move for communities. <\/p>\n
Penn State researchers examined a number of different situations that involved the addition of a microgrid to a regulated network that is served by a vertically integrated utility. “Vertically integrated” refers to the scenario in which a utility company does it all from a power perspective — it generates, transmits and distributes electricity. <\/p>\n
According to the study, approximately 50 percent of all U.S. states have networks operating in a vertically integrated fashion. And most of these setups exist in regulated markets.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that installing a microgrid within a regulated electricity market like explained above will sometimes, but not always, provide an economic benefit<\/strong><\/a> to customers. <\/p>\n According to Chiara Lo Prete, assistant professor of energy economics, Penn State: “It’s not necessarily that a microgrid always does or doesn’t make sense — it really depends on costs and other characteristics of the network, including retail price regulation.”<\/p>\n Microgrid<\/strong>: A self-contained power system, often thought of as a sophisticated backup power system, but that, in some cases, can act as the main source of power for an individual community.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Regardless of any economic benefits (or lack thereof), other potential benefits of operating microgrids at the community level are well documented.<\/p>\n A report<\/strong><\/a> from the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) touted the public safety component of microgrids. With a microgrid, communities can ensure that power is supplied to critical public services during a large outage with a major utility. This can keep banks, cooling centers (or heating centers) etc. available during an outage.<\/p>\n Additionally, there’s always the potential for renewable energy effort to be infused in a community’s individual microgrid project. With full control of the energy source, a community can opt to move away from fossil fuels and power a microgrid with clean energy like solar or wind energy.<\/p>\nOrginally published on → E-Wisdom<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Penn State researchers recently examined microgrids and discovered that they may not always be a wise economic move for communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":529,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":530,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions\/530"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Non-economic microgrid benefits<\/h3>\n