Microgrids are all the rage now, and it’s easy to see why.
They offer the possibility to connect small-scale, renewable energy production with consumers living off the grid. They protect users’ supply when the grid goes down. And they provide a grid where none is present or where one is not powerful enough to meet everyone’s needs.
When we consider that in our high-tech world nearly a billion people still live without electricity, we can see that the microgrid has become a clean, green, fast-track possibility to solve the problem.
Earlier this week, the Global Commission to End Energy PovertyOpens a new window was launched by the Rockefeller Foundation and MIT to look at microgrids as a means to produce enough power to meet the United Nation’s goal to ensure sustainable and affordable electricity for the entire world by 2030.
The commission – led by figures from academia, government, non-government organizations and the energy industry – is charged with developing the new technologies and business models for microgrids that will serve as alternatives to state-run power stations of the past.
Catching Fire in America
Microgrids are also catching on in developed nations.
Santa Rosa Junior College, located in the Redwood Forest of northern California, is experimenting with a microgrid using solar power and batteries. The college built the microgrid in part to light up the campus when the local utility shuts off power due to  conditions ripe for wildfires.
A reportOpens a new window by the local newspaper explains how the campus microgrid decreases regional reliance on fossil fuels and provides a source of renewable energy.
Warning:Â Roadblocks Ahead
Microgrids have the potential to transform the lives of hundreds of millions of people in some of the poorest regions of the world, particularly in sub-Sahara Africa.
With their small-scale nature and advanced technology, they can boost the power supplies of existing grids and reduce the need for more traditional, and often fossil-fuel-powered, electricity stations.
There are concerns, however — one regulatory, the other technological.
Rajiv Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation and one of the main spokesmen for the global commission, explained that if he wanted to set up a solar microgrid in a developing country, “I could be prevented from actually providing power without permission from the state-owned utility, which might own that business opportunity.†Hence, the commission is looking at policy roadblocks that restricts “ownership†of the grids.
In California, David Liebman, Santa Rosa College’s sustainable energy manager, said microgrids break the American utility model: “This is going to shift a lot of the utilities into poles-and-wire companies that manage the distribution grid.â€
Finding Balance
His words hint at the underlying question: Who owns the microgrid? The local community, the state-owned utility or foreign investors?
If we accept that nobody invests out of the goodness of their heart, then the balance has to be struck between investors, communities and utilities, which would be charged with managing the energy flows into the main grid.
The private-sector model prevalent in the United States may need to be adapted to ensure the technology is suitable for developing countries, where money is scarce for adapting existing grids to new technologies.
Also, the US model may not work for impoverished communities that are unable to buy back bonds or infrastructure in time frames attractive to investors.
Running on Batteries
The other concern is technology.
A microgrid relies on improved battery technology, which in turn depends on exploiting finite materials such as lithium and cobalt. We should have learned by now that endlessly extracting the Earth’s resources brings a host of other environmental and social consequences.
Where cars and phones are by their nature small, energy grids don’t have to be. There are other renewable energy storage solutions, some of which are suited to larger setups.
Molten salts look promising, where heat from the sun can be stored in a salt solution and released to generate steam, then energy, in a controllable way at night.
Balance is needed between big and small solutions, and national utilities play an important role in achieving that balance in partnership with investors and communities.