Microgrids: What are they and how do they work?

Because it has macro. Some people may think that it's simpler than the whole American grid, but think of nanotech. Nanotech it's nano, but it doesn't mean that it's simpler than just regular technology. My name is Ali Mirzsani and I'm a professor of electrical engineering and Director of our Power and Energy Center. I do research on power systems, integration of renewables, and how we can have a sustainable clean power system that is also resilient and reliable. Macrogs are a collection of resources and loads. They have different types of generation, mostly what we call distributed energy resources. That means they can have renewables like solar, maybe wind turbines as backup. They could also have diesel generators, and loads could be all the devices that we connect to the clocks. So you can think of them cooling loads like AC. You could think of them of the office loads like computers or electric vehicles or the oven and so on. Typically, macro gades are able to operate in grid connected mode and in islanded mode. What islanded mode means is it can also operate when the grid is not present. And that is really the distinguishing factor for macro gades because that enables them to operate as a resiliency resource. We'll start with a bit of history. The grid or the utility grid is the national electricity delivery system that we have. In the US, our grid is actually connected all the way from West Coast to East Coast, and then we have the Canadian system connected to our system, and we also have parts of Mexico. So it's really a very large engineering system. The power grid actually started as a set of microgrids. We did not really call it micro grids at the time, but if you go back 100, 100, 20 years ago when the power grid just started, we did not really have long distance transmission type of technology that we have today. We still want to have the interconnected grid, but there are applications. There are scenarios where we have local laws that we need to really make sure that they are reliably powered. In terms of implementation, the applications, examples are on university campuses. For example, our own Virginia Tech Electric Service. We have a micro grid on campus, hospitals, police stations, some command centers, and so on, have also been operating as a micro grid. Think of it as kind of have a public transit system and having your own car. We love public transit, right? It's reliable most of the time. It's very cheap, and it's convenient. But there are times that public transit may not be operating or public transit may be too busy or just doesn't go the routes that we want. So you're thinking of Marchers as kind of having a private car But most of the time, you actually still are going to be relying on the utility grid because it's cheaper and it's going to still provide the services that you need to provide. My name is Ali Mzisani. This is microgrids explained.