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The article is about exactly that: > Normally, such a sudden loss would spell disaster for a small, islanded grid. But the Kauai grid has a feature that many l
by itishappy 3y ago
The article is about exactly that:
> Normally, such a sudden loss would spell disaster for a small, islanded grid. But the Kauai grid has a feature that many larger grids lack: a technology called grid-forming inverters. An inverter converts direct-current electricity to grid-compatible alternating current. The island’s grid-forming inverters are connected to those battery systems, and they are a special type—in fact, they had been installed with just such a contingency in mind.
> At the time of this writing, at least eight major grid-forming projects are either under construction or in operation in Australia, along with others in Asia, Europe, North America, and the Middle East.
Utilities are low margin businesses. Why wouldn't they jump at any opportunity to improve efficiencies?
- spywaregorilla 3y agoIt depends on the expected ROI of the investment Utilities don't face competition so the efficiency gains have to speak for themselves. They can't gain marketshare.
- 0xbadcafebee 3y agoThe parent companies that own the utilities can (and do) gain marketshare, and/or profits. They're diversified so they can get profit from other places. There's lots of tricks to use to create profits; get government grants, try to replace old expensive inefficient infrastructure with newer more efficient cheaper stuff, create more infrastructure to service the growing power needs of new power-hungry industries, supply more power to new or growing cities, build out electric vehicle charging, try out new technologies like hydrogen, etc. They are quite expansive operations with a lot of fingers in a lot of pies.
- spywaregorilla 3y agoNone of that is particularly relevant to the claim that a small efficiency improvement is automatically worth the capital cost when there's no competitors.