The big future of microgrids

[kristopher]

4. Centralized grids also extract money out of communities...

First let me define a microgrid more clearly than the article in the OP.

People have used the term microgrid generically to mean a system, whatever the size, that can be separated from, islanded from. The overall larger grid is measured in GWs and TWs, microgrids can be tens or hundreds of MW. I haven't heard a name for them as they get bigger but people have coined new terms for them as they got smaller, nano- grids and pico-grids.”

The core of a microgrid isn't related to the size, but the function. It's a system that is able to be "islanded" from the grid, true. But it is also one that enhances its stand alone value by selling services or power to the larger grid that it's a part of. That's where the size of the project came to be a part of the apparent definition. In the past and due to the cost of the components of a microgrid, it was only economically feasible for a stand alone unit to provide services to the grid if it were large enough to justify the cost of something like a gas turbine generator or a large storage system.

However, now that the cost of renewable generation, control systems and storage are dropping to a new range of lows, even a home system with storage and/or an electric vehicle can sell ancillary services to the grid - it's a definite economic win-win scenario that keeps money circulating in the local communities.