Microgrid Industry News Highlights, October 31, 2016

Microgrid Industry News Highlights October 31, 2016

Solar DC Microgrid Brings Electricity, Light to 800-Year Old Himalayan Village

Microgrid Industry News Highlights October Engineers from the Global Himalayan Expedition (GHE) and volunteers from Infosys working under the direction of the Kargil Rural Electrification Development Agency (KREDA) were able to get a solar DC microgrid up and running in the village of Itchu in less than two days. he village’s solar DC microgrid is actually comprised of six smaller, interconnected microgrids, three 250 W and three 100 W sub-systems. Along with a lithium-ion battery storage system they produce and dispatch electricity for six LED street lights and 150 LED lights in homes and shops.

Could The Energy Internet Actually Work?

In a paper published in the IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica, scientists at Northeastern University in Shenyang, China, have proposed a way to help make energy internet theory a reality. According to the paper, a “distributed approach which does not rely on a central controller could be more applicable to deal with the topology variability and the plug-and-play feature. Moreover, it possesses more robustness, scalability and can be better operated under limited-bandwidth communication.”

UW-Milwaukee Studies New Microgrid Technology That Could Cut Power Bills in Half

UW-Milwaukee professor Rob Cuzner is studying how to more efficiently power homes in Milwaukee. Cuzner, along with Northwest Side Community Development Corporation, is working on developing and testing a microgrid on vacant, city-owned houses in the Garden Homes neighborhood. He hopes to develop a microgrid that won’t convert renewable energy to AC but instead use batteries to store the DC energy taken in, then send it out into buildings in DC form as well.