Talk:Microgrid

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2019 and 6 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Alessandra.barilli.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:04, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Conflict of interest

Major editors here may have a conflict of interest as employees and participants in the programs being described in this article. The article needs input from independent contributors to ensure neutrality. Jojalozzo 14:40, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Copy/Paste

Large sections of this article appear to be lifted without attribution from the DER web site at LBNL. This is a likely source of bias and amounts to plagarism. Short quotes are appropriate when they are necessary but this sort of wholesale copying is not the WP way. Jojalozzo 14:40, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Merge with Distributed generation?

This article appears to overlap significantly with Distributed generation. What is the justification for this separate article? Jojalozzo 14:47, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Agree. Once you cut out the academic argot, what's left is "A microgrid is a locally-controlled set of generators which may be interconnected with centrally generated electricity or operate independantly. Development is a topic of ongoing academic research." which is about 1 paragraph to add to Distributed generation. Any article that needs 3-dozen entries in "See also" is not comprehenisve enough. Why say all that bafflegab around "Design around total system energy requirements" when what it really means is "combined heat and power", and "cogeneration" ? Why baffle us with "hetergenous power qualtiy and reliability" when you really mean "intermittent and unreliable power may still be useful and economoc for some users" ? And so on. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:01, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps adding the core of this microgrids material to the DG article offers an opportunity to resolve the conflict of interest and copy/paste problems. Jojalozzo 15:04, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

"Do not merge; The article is too comprehensive to consider it as being simplistic. Such as a Voltaic (electric) solar array / wind turbine combiation that many individuals (including myself) have installed on their properties. The contributor has specified the system is multiscourced with regard to power generation, and the size of the installation cannot be considered to be domestic. an aside:- Grid tie inverter and Grid-tied electrical system are suitable candidates to merge as they both describe the same thing.Francis E Williams (talk) 21:54, 30 November 2010 (UTC)"

Agree to merge: The above was my original comment on Distributed Generation talk. Having read the article again more thoroughly I agree that there is little difference to the content expressed in both articles. Perhaps the main differences between content may be isolated as a seperate section in Distributed Generation under the Microgrid title?Francis E Williams (talk) 22:17, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

A microgrid is a special form of a DG cluster: while distributed generation only means smaller generators which are connected to the distribution grid (LV + MV level), a microgrid has confined boundaries, and is able to run in island mode. This improves the resilience of the electrical energy supply: in the case of large-scale outage, in a microgrid the light is kept on. This can be a single house, or a building complex or even larger campuses. The island mode is the unique selling point of the microgrid, and there are also small electric islands, which are constantly off-grid (e.g. for rural electrification and on geographical islands)- --Gunnar (talk) 14:38, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree that microgrids are a special form of DC cluster, and since they are of considerable (and growing) interest in their own right, worthy of a separate article. In many non-industrialized countries, microgrids that are used for rural electrification in unelectrified areas are referred to as "mini grids" (with a space between the words). The World Bank ESMAP's Global Facility on Mini Grids (GFMG) works with dozens of countries, many in Sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia and the Caribbean, to help scale deployment of mini grids (generally off-grid) for increased energy access. Monkolosit (talk) 02:32, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

I oppose a merge. Distributed generation is an overall article, though IMO badly written and with an unclear title. Microgrids are increasingly important in the energy transition and deserve an own article. --Wickey (talk) 14:50, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Purpose of a Microgrid

"By this way, it paves a way to effectively integrate various sources of distributed generation (DG), especially Renewable Energy Sources (RES). It also provides a good solution for supplying power in case of an emergency by having the ability to change between islanded mode and grid-connected mode." The first sentence is not true, as the capability to go islanding is costly (switch, energy storage, EMS, resync option), and it is more economically efficient to have a distribution network without these features, but with remote control for DERs to install a lot of power generating units. The second sentance is true. --Gunnar (talk) 17:17, 11 May 2017 (UTC)