Community and Small-Scale Grid Innovation - Smart Grid (R) Evolution: Electric Power Struggles - page 184

an ideal site for Ecogrid EU, because he can switch the cable on and off to conduct realistic
field experiments (Kumagai 2013 ).
7.6.1 Smart Grid as Danish Design
Given the proverb “necessity is the mother of invention,” Bornholm and Denmark may
provide the perfect seedbed for designing smart microgrids. Although Denmark has access
to oil from the North Sea and is an oil exporter, all coal is imported. In an attempt to reduce
dependence on coal and other fossil fuels, Denmark has developed a plan to completely
phaseoutfossilfueluseby2050(DanishEnergyAgency 2013 ; DanishMinistryofClimate
Energy and Building 2013 ) . In 2012, wind power was already providing more than 30
percent of the electricity consumed in Denmark, with a goal of 50 percent by 2020. For
many years, Bornholm has obtained its electric power via an undersea power cable that
connects it with the Nordic grid (Kumagai 2013 ). The cable was accidentally severed four
times in the ten years prior to launching Ecogrid EU, which may have contributed to
Bornholm's readiness to host Ecogrid.
Østkraft had already begun introducing distributed energy resources (DERs) into the
Bornholm system, both to enable rapid response when the undersea power cable was
accidentally damaged and to facilitate integration of the large amount of wind power that
is locally available (Kumagai 2012 ). The Ecogrid project gave Bornholm the financial
resources to develop a virtual power plant that aggregates all of those DERs. Although ten
years ago virtual power plants were mostly experiments, the big players in energy markets
have begun to recognize them as a commercially viable alternative to building traditional
power plants to cover peak capacity needs. Most allow large electricity customers (that
is, industrial production sites) to trade energy in the day-ahead market. Kim Behnke, who
heads R&D at the Danish utility Energinet, describes that process as “Smart Grid, version
1,” noting that on Bornholm “we are going for Smart Grid, version 2” (Kumagai 2012 ) .
Ecogrid's project leaders have collaborated with many of Bornholm's 45,000 permanent
residents to design a smart microgrid that demonstrates that quintessentially Danish term,
hygge . Hygge translates roughly into English as “coziness.” Along with one's physical
surroundings, hygge includes a social dynamic. Although achieving hygge may involve
design elements connected to a nostalgic view of the past (such as soft lighting produced
by flickering candle flames), it does not embrace a naïve belief that nature automatically
produces coziness. Hygge , or “the art of creating intimacy: a sense of comradeship,
conviviality, and contentment rolled into one,” includes an explicit awareness of design
(Fathom 2011 ) . And the entire Ecogrid project was designed with hygge in mind. In 2012,
recruitment kicked off at a giant block party in the demonstration house, Villa Smart
(EcoGrid EU 2013b pp. 24-25). During the next few months, printed materials were