networks

Grid reliability and grid-edge resources

April 2, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A new study by MIT researchers looked at the potential for grid-edge resources to enhance the ability of the electric grid to respond to unforeseen power outages. Grid-edge resources are devices found close to consumers rather than located near central power plants, substations, or transmission lines. These include residential solar panels, storage batteries, electric vehicles, heat pumps, smart thermostats and smart water heaters.

These grid-edge devices can independently generate, store, or tune their consumption of power and increasingly, they are online internet-of-things devices. The MIT study outlined a blueprint for how such devices could reinforce the power grid through a local electricity market. Owners of grid-edge devices could subscribe to such a market and essentially loan out their device as part of a microgrid or local network as on-call energy resources.

Electric vehicles could provide power rather than consuming it when necessary. Storage batteries could do the same. Devices like smart dishwashers and thermostats would reduce their power demands when necessary.

In the event that the main power grid is compromised, an algorithm would determine which grid-edge devices were available and trustworthy and would either use them to pump power into the grid or reduce the power they are drawing from it in order to help mitigate the power failure.

The MIT researchers illustrated this grid resilience strategy through a number of grid attack scenarios including failures from cyber-attacks and natural disasters. Their analysis showed that various networks of grid-edge devices are capable of defeating various types of grid failures.

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Rooftop panels, EV chargers, and smart thermostats could chip in to boost power grid resilience

Photo, posted October 10, 2019, courtesy of Noya Fields via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Solid-state batteries for cars

September 19, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Battery-powered electric vehicles have historically faced the challenges of limited driving range and long charging time. In recent years, both of these limitations have been largely overcome for many if not most drivers. Popular EVs on the market can go 300 miles and more on a charge and today’s fastest charging networks can add 200 miles of range in 20 minutes. But many people want even more range and even faster charging. Both of these things will happen in the not-too-distant future.

Multiple companies are working on solid-state batteries, which hold more energy in a given volume than current batteries. The lithium-ion batteries that power today’s EVs (as well as our phones and computers) have a liquid or gel electrolyte. Solid-state batteries use a solid ceramic or polymer electrolyte that provides higher energy density, faster charging times, and reduced fire risk as well.

Samsung announced that it will produce solid-state batteries for vehicles by 2027. Toyota says it is on track to develop a solid-state battery by 2027 or 2028. California-based QuantumScape has an agreement to supply solid-state batteries to Volkswagen for mass production. Tesla has not said what it is doing with regard to solid-state batteries, but it is likely that it’s also pursuing the technology.

The upshot of all of this is that EV ranges are likely to increase dramatically over the next several years leading to the availability of vehicles that can go 600 miles or more on a charge. Given that the cost of EVs is already rapidly becoming at least competitive with if not lower than that of gasoline-powered cars, the days of internal combustion are becoming numbered.

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Want an EV With 600 Miles of Range? It’s Coming

Photo, posted August 17, 2024, courtesy of Bill Abbott via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Fungus And Carbon Storage | Earth Wise

July 26, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

It is well-known that plants and trees store enormous amounts of carbon. What has not been common knowledge is that the vast underground network of fungi across the world’s lands stores billions of tons carbon, roughly equivalent to 36% of yearly global fossil fuel emissions.

These mycorrhizal fungi form symbiotic relationships with almost all land plants. The fungi transport carbon, converted by sugars and fats by plants, into soil. They have been supporting life on land for at least 450 million years and form sprawling underground networks everywhere – even beneath roads, gardens, and houses – on every continent on earth.

An international team of scientists analyzed hundreds of studies looking at plant-soil processes to understand how much carbon is being stored by fungi on a global scale. The findings, published in the journal Current Biology, revealed that over 13 billion tons of CO2 is transferred from plants to fungi each year, more than China emits annually. This process transforms the soil beneath our feet to a massive carbon pool and constitutes the most effective carbon storage activity in the world.

Given that fungi have such a crucial role in mitigating carbon emissions, the researchers are recommending that fungi should be considered in biodiversity and conservation policies. More needs to be done in protecting the underground networks of mycorrhizal fungi. The UN has warned that human activities are degrading soils and that 90% of the world’s soils could be degraded by 2050. Not only would this obviously be very bad for the productivity of crops and plants, but we now know this could be catastrophic for curbing climate change and rising temperatures.

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Fungi stores a third of carbon from fossil fuel emissions and could be essential to reaching net zero

Photo, posted May 28, 2023, courtesy of Geoff McKay via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Transmission Lines And Wildlife Habitat Connectivity | Earth Wise

April 14, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Electrical transmission lines and their support towers tend to be a blight on the landscape but are something modern society cannot avoid. Power transmission networks – with towers every 200 meters or so of line – are in place throughout the world’s developed nations. Another common feature of developed nations is the fragmentation of animal species caused by human activity breaking up their natural habitats.

It is important for biodiversity conservation for animals to get their environments connected. It turns out that transmission line infrastructure can provide an important tool for reconnecting wildlife habitats.

In a study conducted in Spain’s Andalusia region, scientists planted native shrubs and seedlings under six towers along power lines running through cereal cropland. The area of each tower base was 100 square meters.

Compared to four control sites, the researchers measured increased population density and diversity among arthropods and small mammals observed in the four-year study.

Enhancing connectivity through networks of habitat corridors or stepping-stone patches has become a key concept in conservation biology and landscape ecology. Renting or buying large parcels of land to connect protected natural areas to one another would be cost prohibitive but planting suitable native shrubs and other flora under existing transmission line networks can provide many of the same benefits.

In general, power companies pay rent to landowners – often farmers or agribusinesses – for the rights to place towers on their land. Because it is difficult to work the areas under towers with farm equipment, that space is typically unused, which opens the door to low-cost efforts by environmentalists.

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Electrical transmission lines have power to enhance habitat connectivity for wildlife

Photo, posted April 29, 2018, courtesy of Georgi Todorov/digitalnovas.com via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Predicting Lightning Strikes

November 19, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Lightning is one of the most unpredictable phenomena in nature. Approximately 100 lightning bolts strike earth’s surface every second, and each lightning bolt can contain up to one billion volts of electricity. Lightning regularly kills both people and animals and sets homes and forests on fire. It’s also been known to ground airplanes.

Researchers at EPFL – a research institute and university in Switzerland – have developed a novel way to predict where and when lightning will strike. The system relies on a combination of standard data from weather stations and artificial intelligence to predict lightning strikes to the nearest 10 to 30 minutes and within a radius of less than 20 miles. The simple and inexpensive system was outlined in a research paper recently published in Climate and Atmospheric Science, a Nature partner journal.

According to researchers, the current systems for predicting lightning strikes are slow, expensive, and complex, relying on external data acquired by satellite and radar. The new inexpensive system from EPFL uses real time data that can be obtained from any weather station, meaning it can cover remote regions that are out of radar and satellite range and where communication networks are lacking. The quick predictions from the system allow alerts to be issued before a storm has even formed.

The system uses a machine-learning algorithm that’s been trained to recognize conditions that lead to lightning. The researchers took into account atmospheric pressure, air temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed, among other things. After training the algorithm, the system was able to predict lightning strikes accurately nearly 80% of the time.

This system is a simple way to predict a complex phenomenon.

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Using AI to predict where and when lightning will strike

Photo, posted December 14, 2018, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.