Solarising Cities: Microgridding Our Communities One Neighborhood At A Time
Superstorms knocking out power to millions — some for weeks or months. Shadowy hackers penetrating entire regional utility grids with the aim and increasing capability of wreaking havoc on our communications, transportation, health and safety, law enforcement and food and fuel supply chains by manipulating and shutting down the sources that supply their power.
These and similar scenarios, till recently solely the nightmares of cinematic catastrophe, are now not simply plausible but actual, coming soon to a city near you. Big Power, the giant regional utilities that have served many millions of customers at once through a centralized system of mega-power plants and sprawling transmission lines, have operated with reliability and efficiency for decades. But newly emerging threats from intensifying superstorms and cyberattacks are turning the very virtues of centralization into potentially fatal vulnerabilities. A single strike against a utility imperils the lives and livelihoods of millions.
Fortunately, a new generation of decentralized renewable energy technologies is reaching maturity with the capability of effectively addressing some of the most serious vulnerabilities of highly centralized utility grids. Unlike nuclear power they are neither extremely expensive nor plagued by safety concerns. They’re sophisticated without being unduly complicated, and on a scale small enough to be built and maintained at a municipal or even neighborhood level. Solar microgrids, pairing locally sited solar arrays with energy storage and inverters, have begun to be installed around the U.S., first in remote sites like military bases where it would be too costly to run power lines and more recently in select urban neighborhoods ranging from college campuses and small towns to a Brooklyn mixed-income community and a Native American casino.
Till now the full potential of solar microgrids densely deployed in urban cores has not been fully envisioned, let alone implemented. Yet it’s a far less costly and vulnerable and more immediately implementable approach than further centralizing our regional grids — a hugely expensive proposition requiring a whole new continental transmission infrastructure that is yet another prime target for disruption. Microgrids, by contrast, strengthen the robustness of our electrical and information systems by dispersing them into thousands of secure, self-reliant yet interconnected modules. Each microgrid would be capable of generating the power to service the essential services of its own neighborhood on either a standby or routine basis. Taken together, they would reinforce the resilience of regional utility grids by enabling microgrids to instantly decouple and operate independently whenever the main grid is under threat.
Energy storage is key to the viability of renewably powered microgrids since without efficient and cost-effective storage solar and wind end up flooding the main grid with too much energy during their peak output. Fortunately, lithium ion batteries are experiencing the same kinds of dramatic price drops solar and wind have in the past several years, bringing them into the range of affordability.
Major regional utilities are deeply concerned that if microgrids are allowed to proliferate in their core urban markets they will be left with only those customers who haven’t the means, money or initiative to form their own microgrids. It’s essential to come to agreements between renewable energy microgrid advocates and regional utilities that acknowledge and support the crucial roles of both in providing reliable, secure power to their customers. But clearly the role of investor-owned utilities is changing in fundamental ways as the market opens up and energy is generated by an ever wider variety of entities. Going forward, public utilities may find a profitable new role for themselves as large-scale energy storage providers through major projects like pumped hydro and thermal energy installations that are too expensive and space-consuming for neighborhood microgrids to build and maintain independently in high-cost, tightly confined urban environments.
Cities are ideally positioned to microgrid their own jurisdictions neighborhood by neighborhood, facility by facility. They would best begin by building solar microgrids to provide alternative power to those public services — hospitals, schools, law enforcement and fire departments, food and fuel suppliers, gas stations and grocery stores — that are deemed most essential in case of sudden disruptions of the main utility grid.
This city-centered approach to urban renewable microgridding would be rapidly advanced if adopted by powerful new coalitions of cities in both blue and red states that have re-committed to the Paris climate accord in the wake of President Trump’s withdrawal. Adding superstorm and cyber-protection to their existing climate agenda of going 100 percent renewable is a natural pairing since cities are the primary targets of cyberattacks and most vulnerable to superstorms and microgridding them achieves both objectives at once. And by embarking on accelerated microgridding programs in their urban cores they can achieve their 100 percent goals in a fraction of the time they currently project, five to eight years instead of twenty-five to thirty.
Financing the construction of microgrids need not be an expensive or burdensome proposition nor an obstacle to rapid deployment. The costs of microgridding essential services are not exorbitant. Microgridding urban cores is an essential infrastructure and population protection measure deserving of the highest municipal priority, with bond issues to support their construction and maintenance understood as vital to the functioning of every other essential service. Building microgrids are best viewed not as an expense but as an investment in energy independence and an eventual source of revenue. Once the return on investment is reached (5–8 years), savings from self-generation grow with each passing year, especially as prices for other sources of energy rise.
To finance the building of residential neighborhoods, municipalities could offer “solar savings bonds” issued in denominations of $500 or more, small enough that local residents of modest means can afford to purchase them and earn better returns than savings accounts or CD’s while avoiding the risky and ethically suspect stock market. As with conventional savings bonds, the buyer would purchase the bond at a lesser initial price, then receive periodic interest payments and the face value when the bond matures. The emotional buy-in engendered by being able to invest directly in the local grid that powers your own neighborhood could be profound. How many opportunities do we have these days to invest in our own communities and witness the positive results? Knowing that what you and your neighbors have invested has made it happen and that together through your municipality you own this energy-independent power source could become an enduring source of community pride and a spur to other forms of cooperation.
Strengthening our collective energy immune system is a radically different approach from conventional strategies of offense and defense. It is neither. Rather, it is an internally focused effort to summon our collective resources, build resilient communities, and regrow the bonds of mutual aid and common purpose that have atrophied during decades of over-dependence on centralized power. This kind of power threatens no one but strengthens all who participate in it. Rather than power over, it is power within and between, enriching us all.
