Decentralized Electrification: With great power comes great responsibility
“Power to the people” goes the familiar cry of the revolution. Well in the energy sector, it couldn’t be taken more literally. The transition from a fossil fuel-based global economy, to one that is powered by decentralized renewables is underway. Although, it’s not quite a revolution yet. The road ahead is strewn with challenges. But with a bit of a push from the global community of innovators to overcome them, the hope is that the revolution will gather speed.
The great responsibility
Barely a day passes where climate change or global warming doesn’t hit the headlines for one reason or another. It is mere weeks since the Paris Agreement came into effect. A deal, which at its simplest, formalizes the ambitious joint-nations global environmental agreement to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius. To meet this, it aims to reduce net greenhouse-gas emissions around the world to zero by the end of the century. And that means cutting the use of fossil fuels wherever possible.
Now this isn’t a starting gun for action. Nor is it a solution in itself. There has been a realization that a change needs to occur for many years and positive steps have been made. For example, in terms of the share of power generation, the amount of solar power being generated to power homes and offices has doubled seven times in the past 15 years; wind power has doubled four times. However, it does make tangible a feeling that seems to be in the air that it is time to ramp up the effort. Earlier in the year, Bill Gates called for innovative solutions in an open letter from his foundation. “In short,” he wrote, “We need an energy miracle.”
And so the challenge is laid. But where there are challenges, there are opportunities for innovative solutions. These new global conditions will entail massive market and business transformations and next47 is ready to lead the fundamental structural change in the areas of electricity generation, supply and distribution — with your help! It is for this reason that Decentralized Electrification is one of our chosen innovation fields.
The great power
The basic concept of distributed generation is the production of electricity in small quantities near the point of use, rather than in large amounts in a few places: a transition which literally brings the power to the people. Such a system touts several advantages. Firstly, it is more secure than traditional centralized models. As risk is also decentralized, it relieves dependency on large assets. Secondly, it can be more flexible in that it can scale up or down according to demand. Finally, decentralized models are typically based on renewable sources meaning greatly reduced emissions. However, the picture is not yet complete. In order to fully realize these benefits and for this type of distributed electrification to really take off, some things would need to change. And therein lie the business opportunities next47 is so keen to explore. Let’s first address the elephant on the grid: intermittent power output.
Storing energy for a rainy day
One day the sun splits the trees; the next day the dark clouds sit just above your head. This only goes to illustrate the risk of intermittent power on a grid based on distributed renewables. While conventional generating systems have the advantage of the outputs being within human control because the inputs are within control (i.e. in response to a voltage sag for example, one can simply inject more combustion fuel), the opposite is the case for renewables. We cannot move clouds or turn the sun up. Therefore, the development of systems which convert and store accumulated energy when generation exceeds demand to be released on ‘that rainy day’ becomes of technological priority and has the potential to be the “miracle” that Gates spoke of. What’s needed, in other words, are innovative solutions capable of converting electricity into types of energy that lend themselves well to storage, such as heat, cold, hydrogen or other chemicals.
Multimodal grids: the importance of working together
Current trends are seeing individual energy systems for electricity, heating and air-conditioning, gas and mobility evolving into multimodal systems. As a result, the future energy infrastructure will be required to use different options and energy forms in parallel. At the end of the day, the best energy storage options in any given situation will depend mainly on what the energy will be used for in a given geographical area. For example, heat and mobility could provide solutions in many of Europe’s industrial regions, where, in addition to large batteries (power to power), there is room for increased use of procedures that will save electrical energy such as heat (power to heat), fuel (power to fuel) or that in the form of other chemicals (power to chemicals). As a result, converters will play an increasingly important role in this area and a major technological challenge is to find ways to enable different energy sources to interact in these systems.
Smarter than your average grid
Current grid systems were not designed with the idea of multiple inputs from decentralized generation in mind. If widespread implementation were to occur, such a model would require a complete rethink of how the grid fundamentally works: i.e. the relationship between generators and networks. Smart grids would mean they communicate with each other as to how the network needs to adapt and where best to add connections. At the same time, digital applications and services will affect all levels of the system. ‘Smart’ converters working with advanced power electronics and digital technologies will increasingly be added to passive grid components such as switches and transformers, inviting innovative ideas from any proponents of smart technology.
Batteries included
Another potential “miracle” area is that of innovative battery solutions: key drivers of Distributed Electrification for several reasons. Not only do they play a major role in the storage of energy to account for fluctuations, they also provide a means of being essentially self-reliant. By installing a battery in your home or company, and combining it with integrated management software, you could completely or partially rely on power that you’ve produced yourself.
Indeed, connecting such ‘private’ batteries to smart grids and automatically managing the complex network is another area of interest and one that next47 is already working on through a collaboration with Caterva. The German startup combines batteries in home solar systems with radio technology and software in order to create a battery swarm that has enough capacity to bolster the power reserve of regional grids. Finally, batteries are mobile. They bring ‘green power’ to things that are on the move and can’t be plugged into the grid via a socket: electric cars for example. With more and more e-mobility applications expected in the future — such as ships with electric or hybrid drive systems — there is most definitely a need for new storage technology, more efficient charging technology and improved mobile battery solutions to be developed.
If any of these fields have sparked an innovative idea in you then we want to hear it! And as always, we are open to thinking outside the grid!
