Community and Small-Scale Grid Innovation - Smart Grid (R) Evolution: Electric Power Struggles - page 165

7 Community and Small-Scale Grid Innovation
7.1 The Promise of Local Control
One of the many promises of smart grid that we outlined in Chapter 2 is the potential for
more local electricity generation and community control. Local distributed generation (DG)
offers new possibilities for community engagement and ownership in electricity systems.
This chapter explores the tensions and opportunities for smart grid to contribute to local
and small-scale electricity system initiatives. In this chapter we explore how smart grid
is shaping (and being shaped by) small-scale energy initiatives in which communities,
individuals, and organizations engage in electricity systems planning at the local level.
The chapter includes discussion of community-based electricity systems and microgrids.
Microgrids are generally defined as miniature versions of the larger electricity system, and
often microgrids have the potential to separate from the larger grid system - a capacity
referred to as “islanding.” Microgrids often, but not always, emerge alongside
community-based initiatives led by locavolts , people who seek to build self-reliance through
local control of their energy systems.
Local power and microgrid initiatives are emerging in many different contexts.
Investments in these small-scale or community-oriented initiatives include efforts by
municipalities trying to take control of their electricity systems, as well as internationally
supported initiatives where governments are trying to encourage local control. These local
electricity systems include initiatives on college campuses, military installations, and
industrial facilities.
Small-scale and community initiatives, when examined as individual case studies,
demonstrate many of the promises, pitfalls, and tensions associated with larger-scale notions
of smart grid. In considering the development of small-scale grid initiatives, one of the
dominant tensions relates to whether the grid should be designed to promote and support
more centralized or more decentralized electricity systems. Many of the risks and benefits,
promises and pitfalls of decentralized systems become clearly evident in small-scale
community initiatives. A community-based electric grid, for example, may enable the
community to keep the lights on when a weather-related disruption cuts off power to
surrounding communities. At the same time, a community-based electric grid with dynamic
pricing could expose electricity customers to economic challenges resulting from greater