[toomuchtodo]

Rural electrification was needed at the time. In many cases, it no longer is (distributed generation, microgrids, etc vs large, distant generators having to transport power to residential load centers).

This is very similar to how Africa will leapfrog the legacy model with cheap solar and batteries.

In Australia, they have a model of colocating stationary battery storage in neighborhoods to balance buffer solar production locally for time shifting purposes (vs shipping that power far only to bring it back in the evening).

[XorNot]

In Australia that policy was rolled out basically this year and is still in the trial stage.

[toomuchtodo]

The fundamentals are proven (energy arbitrage, grid services, grid forming, all with battery storage). In Australia, the economics are very favorable considering high rooftop solar penetration rates. The trial will be successful, the debate is how successful.

[eldaisfish]

this is entirely wrong. There is no world in which rural areas can substitute the power grid with anything you described. It is not possible - in the absolute sense - to match the power grid's reliability and stability with a bunch of local solutions. The cost is another matter but take Canada - the lowest electricity rates in the OECD.

The local solution to solve local problem absolutely works, but that is not what you are describing.

Africa is not going to substitute a continental scale grid with solar and batteries. That's just pie-in-the-sky levels of delusion.

[KennyBlanken]

You..clearly know nothing about power grids, because utilities are deploying batteries precisely because they increase reliability an ease maintenance. And microgrids exist all over the US - a bunch are in Alaska and other very rural areas. Those communities have started adding battery storage systems to account for sudden load changes their generators can't handle, generator failure or maintenance, and so on.

Without them the grid is like a bunch of dominoes where a failure can cascade unless grid operators, or automated systems, react fast enough. Battery systems are like power firewalls; if the main grid goes down, the battery keeps right on chugging.

If circuit protection devices or an equipment failure happens on a main transmission line, the utility has hours to fix it, and meanwhile everyone has power. Ditto for maintenance. Need to replace that big huge switch that feeds part of the county? No problem, just...shut it off. Long as you're done before the battery bank runs out, everything's fine.

Right now you can end up with situations where a power plant will "trip" and go offline, such as when a large amount of load is disconnected due to a transmission line failure or substation failure. The grid frequency goes up if the power plants on the grid can't throttle back fast enough, and instead, to keep the grid from going over-frequency, the plant goes offline entirely.

If a lot of areas are on battery - those systems can be commanded to start charging to stop the plants from speeding up. If the grid goes dead, it's not nearly as big a deal, because the grid operators have more time to do things like sequence the re-connection of all those areas.

I'd imagine that with a bunch of battery systems distributed around a grid, they could potentially be able help black-start a plant if needed.

Battery systems also reduce the need for a transmission line upgrade; when demand is higher than the line's capacity, the battery system steps in. When demand is below the line capacity, the battery system charges.

[eldaisfish]

i'd be careful telling someone that they don't know about power grids.

All the microgrids you describe provide basic needs. None power serious industry anywhere.

Batteries are a good solution for certain situations, not as a fix-all. All the batteries in the world can power a large power system like California or Quebec for minutes. That's right - minutes.

[toomuchtodo]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X2...

https://www.undp.org/energy/africa-minigrids-program

https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2023/02/26/s...

https://www.esmap.org/mini_grids_for_half_a_billion_people_t...

https://www.nrel.gov/reopt/projects/case-study-sub-saharan-a...