Local Grids for Energy and Education
Maybe it sounds crazy for families to generate their own electricity. Why not just rely on the local electric utility monopoly for power? Well, for one thing, monopolies (single providers) tend to have higher costs and fall behind on service and technology. Plus, regulated utilities get distracted by special interests and drawn into various side projects (environmental education, electric cars, and green energy, for example).
Local education monopolies suffer from similar special interest distractions which is one reason millions of American students have shifted to parent-directed education and local education networks, or grids. Most homeschooling, especially for older students, takes place outside the home, with support from other families and educational service providers.
Hundreds of homeschool cooperatives offer course and class options plus students can take online courses and earn college credit from Lumerit Unbound (formerly CollegePlus) and other providers. Homeschooling estimates range from 1.8 million on up.
An October 16, 2019 Heartland Institute article discusses the size and diversity of American homeschooling:
About 26 percent of U.S. homeschooling families—more than 400,000—are Hispanic, and 8 percent—about 130,000 families—are black, National Center for Education Statistics data show.
“The homeschooling community includes Muslim and Jewish families, military families, families of gifted students and of those with special needs,” Hirsh writes. “Homeschoolers run the political spectrum from left to right and the economic spectrum from wealthy to poor.”
Estimates of the number of homeschooled students in the United States range from two million to three million.
REPORT: HOMESCHOOLERS MUCH MORE DIVERSE THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT (Heartland Institute, October 16, 2019)
Most have long thought going off the educational grid to homeschool was weird. But just as millions have left state schools and turned to parent-directed education, a growing number of families are looking to self-reliance and local microgrids for electricity.
Technology advances have expanded options for home education, enabling free videoconferencing, for example. New technologies also increase options for home electricity. Microgrids Keep These Cities Running When the Power Goes Out (Inside Climate News, December 4, 2017) reviews communities that have invested in microgrids because their electric utility provider is not reliable.
Borrego Springs, California, is a quaint town of about 3,400 people set against the Anza-Borrego Desert about 90 miles east of San Diego. Summers are hot—often north of 100 degrees—and because it lies at the far end of a San Diego Gas & Electric transmission line, the town has suffered frequent power outages. High winds, lightning strikes, forest fires and flash floods can bust up that line and kill the electricity. …
Microgrids have long been used in remote areas to power off-grid villages, military operations or industrial projects. But increasingly they’re being used in cities or towns, in urban centers, on university or corporate campuses, in hospitals or at data centers.
These microgrids run in parallel with the main grid. When severe weather knocks out power lines, a microgrid can separate itself like an island from the main grid and continue to serve its customers.
Here’s how some Bay Area businesses and residents circumvented the PG&E power blackout (The Mercury News, October 17, 2019) makes the case for expanding microgrids to offer more resilient local power:
These stations – as well as Apple’s new campus, Kaiser-Richmond Medical Center, two wineries and an increasing number of businesses and homes — have their own independent power system: a solar-harnessed “microgrid” that collects, stores and releases energy on demand, operating even when PG&E doesn’t. …
This week’s blackouts not only incited fury but exposed the peril of relying on PGE’s antiquated power grid – and the promise, aided by the falling cost of technologies, of independent infrastructures that can better withstand disasters, both natural and man-made.
The projects are new and isolated but their implications are far reaching, upending the traditional relationship between consumers and utilities.
A 2018 Vox article, Meet the microgrid, the technology poised to transform electricity (Vox, May 24, 2018) paints microgrids as part of a green energy transformation, and is subtitled “This is the path to a cleaner, more reliable, more resilient energy grid.” Though many microgrid articles and enthusiasts focus on expanding renewable energy and reducing or ending fossil fuel use, cost-effective reliable and resilient power today depends mostly upon fossil fuels. Plus, burning fossil fuels doesn’t have to emit CO2 to the atmosphere.
Smaller natural gas powered generators can power microgrids, and if CO2 emissions are a concern (if a future carbon tax raises emission costs, for example), various solutions can either absorb CO2 from the atmosphere or not emit it in the first place. Net Power’s plant in La Porte, Texas is an example. The zero-CO2 plant is described in Net Zero Natural Gas Plant — The Game Changer (Forbes, July 31, 2019). And the Net Power website explains:
Using a patented thermodynamic cycle called the Allam Cycle, NET Power is able to generate lower-cost power from fossil fuels than existing power plants while eliminating all air emissions, including carbon dioxide.Additionally, the CO2 that NET Power plants generate from burning fuel is produced as a high-pressure, high-quality byproduct, ready for pipeline transportation and storage. In many places, this CO2 can be sold for use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR), permanently sequestering the CO2 and providing significant added value for NET Power plant owners.
https://www.netpower.com/ (On Nov. 14, 2019, 7:19 pm)
NetPower’s technology is larger scale and for now seems too much for a local microgrids. Other smaller-scale options exist. Ready Fossil Fuel Solutions for California Wildfires and Blackouts (Part II), (MasterResource, November 14, 2019) links to microgrid energy articles and companies, plus makes the case that local power and buried power lines to serve Californians far better than distant hydro, wind, and solar power sources, and the long distance transmission lines they require.
Localized, small and mobile natural gas-fueled power plants and generators, coupled with underground power lines, offer the only localized option for safe and reliable electricity. …
California already deploys micro-turbine natural gas power cogeneration plants to supply all the electricity in some of its college campuses, such as the 15-megawatt co-generation natural gas-solar power plant at San Diego State University. Commercial Distributed Gas Generation (DGG – 2 megawatts) is already deployed at Taylor Farms in Gonzalez and True Leaf Farms in San Juan Bautista, California.
Ready Fossil Fuel Solutions for California Wildfires and Blackouts (Part II)
The MasterResource article explains that smaller scale natural gas power is also available:
Natural gas-powered home generators are another option in fire-prone areas. Reportedly, such units can be installed for $10,000 to $30,000. Although this can be unaffordable for many, government is already subsidizing rooftop solar systems for $30,000 that provide power for only 6 to 8 hours per day and, again, depend on natural gas power plants for backup, which requires transmission lines.
The M-Co Gen company offers a gas-solar powered home generator that also cools as well as heats and electrifies a home. But why mix rooftop solar panels with natural gas when the panels risk damage in high wind zones? Gas-powered generators are usually located outside homes which also run a risk during firestorms. But gas-generators would provide more reliability over purely electric generators during planned blackouts.
On a recent flight to San Francisco, just after the PG&E blackouts, I sat with homeschool father returning home to his family in the mountains above Santa Cruz. The power was out but he had a generator and large propane tank. In theory he could last a long time without power, but his neighbor didn’t have a generator and the shared well was on the neighbor’s property. So after buying a long extension cord, he planned to research further options. He said all portable generators within hundreds of miles of the Bay Area were sold out.
Natural gas alternatives are discussed in Natural gas-fueled house generates its own power: System can cut consumption by 70 percent, keep home off the grid (Houston Chronicle, May 10, 2014):
The natural gas-powered unit ties into the home’s multiple energy sources, including solar, natural gas, battery power and electricity. The home’s electricity demand can be reduced by as much as 70 percent, according to M-CoGen, and has a power supply designed to be virtually uninterruptable.
Utility regulations block or restrict microgrid technologies for consumers. A natural gas cogeneration plant that powers a factory could also provide residential power but that is usually illegal in order to protect local utility monopolies from competition.
The Independence Institute in Colorado hosted a November 8, 2018 Microgrid Summit exploring technologies and regulatory barriers:
Microgrids, which allow individuals and businesses to share the electricity they generate, are a growing global trend in electricity generation and distribution. Join us and our lineup of microgrid experts as we explore this increasingly popular option to our current centralized grid. Our speakers discuss everything from what is a microgrid to their wide appeal across the political spectrum and what obstacles face Coloradans who may want to invest in microgrids.
Brit Nass of the Independence Institute discusses microgrids in the video, describing them as like “Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, these sharing economy platforms…”
Most of life is local and maybe the enthusiasm for local will eventually embrace local networks, local grids, for education and energy as well.
Homeschooling is home-based but misunderstood. The average American home was over 2,500 square feet in 2015, up from 1,660 square feet in 1973. Much larger than the average one-room schoolhouse from a century ago, thousands of American homes today serve as informal multi-room school houses. American homes consume more energy now, but also have more room for education and social gatherings.
Across the U.S., homeschool cooperatives offer local classes, clubs, and courses, with a fleet of parent-driven minivans transporting students from place to place. In some “homeschool” families, both parents work, so other parents in the clubs and cooperatives oversee their children during work hours.
Just as networks of families work together to produce and distribute education services, local networks could manage electricity production and distribution. Many legal barriers to home education enterprises have been taken down, though many still exist. Legal barriers to local electricity entrepreneurs and competition mostly still stand.
Declaration on Energy Choice & Competition EnergyChoice, November 15, 2019) reports:
The civil society declaration calls upon world leaders to commit to removing barriers to competition in energy markets to increase opportunities for renewable energy, efficiency, and innovation.
Though access is electricity isn’t a right governments can protect or guarantee, government policies and regulations that restrict access to electricity, that create artificial barriers between energy providers and consumers, is clearly a wrong.
Yet another player in the zero-CO2 emission natural gas race: Clean Energy Systems, with this Zero Emissions Power Generation page. (Though the illustration gives a first impression of a natural gas power plant set in a greenhouse. All that’s missing are the fast=growing veggies…)