Innovation

迷你电网的力量

Jun 2, 2017 Strive Masiyiwa and Richard Branson

哈拉雷—尽管在近几年来取得了令人印象深刻的经济发展成就，但非洲仍然在能源方面远远落后，近三分之二的非洲公民用不上电。让人民用上更多的电是一个重要的目标，但扩张电网费钱又费时。与此同时，网下选择也无法满足人民的能源需要。幸运的是，有第三条道路可以帮助填补空白：迷你电网。

迷你电网本质上是本地化的电力网络，可供应多个用户，包括家庭和企业。它们可以与电网相连，但非必须。非洲进步委员会（Africa Progress Panel，本文作者之一是其中的成员）的最新报告指出——并获得了落基山研究所（Rocky Mountain Institute）的一份报告的印证——迷你电网是非洲能源拼图的重要一块。

迷你电网较之将电网扩大到农村和偏远地区拥有巨大的竞争优势，因为它们可以以更快的速度和更低的成本供电。迷你电网所需要的资本投资要小于电网扩张，因此更容易确保融资，这意味着它们可以为原本需要等待多年才能接入电网的社区提供电力。

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Strive Masiyiwa

Writing for PS since 2014
4 Commentaries

Strive Masiyiwa is African Union Special Envoy on COVID-19 and Head of the African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team.

Richard Branson

Writing for PS since 2017
1 Commentary

Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, is an investor and philanthropist.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 2 Comments on this article

John Brian Shannon Jul 19, 2017

Hi Strive and Richard,

One of the richest targets for enemies of Western nations is their hyper-vulnerable transmission corridors where hundreds of thousands of miles of power lines and pylons criss-cross every region and state on the continent.

During the Cold War, national grids were prime targets for foreign fighter-bomber jets and for small (non-nuclear) cruise missiles.

A few well-placed shots and a country could be in crisis for months, and during the cold winter months in northern states, or in the middle of the hot summer in southern states -- could cause a healthcare crisis for millions of people.

Today, the greatest threat to national grids comes from hackers, who can do far more damage to a national grid than a fleet of fighter-bomber jets.

Suffice it to say that national grids, and in particular, transmission corridors, are prime targets for the enemies of any nation, and they are incredibly vulnerable.

The time of the 'national grid' is well past, but we are slow to make the changeover.

Each city -- whether in the developing world, or in developed nations -- should have its own mini-grid, its own tailored renewable energy+efficiency+natural gas generation mix (you need natural gas to cover intermittency of renewables like at night when the Sun doesn't shine and during the times that the wind doesn't blow) or you need a very large battery system, such as TESLA is installing in South Australia:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-07/sa-to-get-worlds-biggest-lithium-ion-battery/8687268

It's not only developing nations that need to start building mini-grids and micro-grids, but our ultra-vulnerable national grids in developed nations are huge and largely unprotected targets, due to the vast swathes of land the power lines and pylons cover.

Reinvent Fire: Change Energy Use Forever
“By investing $4.5 trillion we can save $9.5 trillion and make our energy problems history.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT-g__695Go

In some developing nations, infrastructure security is limited to cities, so a national electrical grid is completely out of the question anyway, and will remain so for some time.

Might as well spend the time and effort to do it right the first time by building mini-grids suitable for each city, each town, and each rural region of every developing country.

Sendai, Japan made a small but important contribution to prove the merits of microgrids some years ago and it continues to work well for them:

http://kleef.asia/blog/2014/04/28/smart-microgrids-plug-play/

And in the U.S. microgrids are set to become a $1 billion business by 2020:

https://jbsnews.com/2015/11/03/microgrids-1-billion-biz-2020/

Mini-grids and microgrids can solve all energy problems and increase the energy security for all nations, including developed nations!

Thank you for posting your fine essay here at ProSyn! A great read.

As always, very best regards, JBS
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William church Jun 7, 2017

Anyone who has worked in the developing world knows immediately the huge problems with this idea. First, wind needs constant management. I think the author thinks you just put up a turbine and get electricity. That is absurd. Solar also needs management and maintenance. When we built water systems in villages we learned we also need to build a supply of parts and maintenance. This is why we build GRID. It is just that simple. Also who is going to manage the SCADA system. Will be that done centrally. I could go on and on. Great idea but by the time you put it all together you might as well as built a hybrid system of mini-grid controlled by a central authority with a grid as base power. The real problem is not transmission. So build the lines. It is building large enough base power. In this way MINI works maybe
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https://prosyn.org/R3Bv8Rwzh

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