In an energy transition that is all about “alternate” resources, it may end up that being “direct” is the best delivery method to make on-site, decarbonized power dreams come true.
Direct current, or DC, that is. The battle over DC vs. alternating current as the primary delivery for electricity transmission systems was thought as settled a long time ago: Tesla over Edison for the knockout, as AC made more sense for moving load over the power lines and through the transformers of the day.
The electric power sector of today, more than a century after that clash of the titans, is much different. The 20th century grid is not ready for the prime power needs of an unprecedented, diffuse and diverse load now encompassing new AI-centered data centers, electric vehicle charging infrastructure and long interconnection queues trying to link new on-site power with the main grid owned by utilities which were predicting flat load growth only a few years ago. (Whew! A sentence and challenge like that almost takes your breath away).
Solving a problem utilities take too long to fix
This dilemma may require thinking beyond the utilities. Off-grid, on-site and direct current close to the load is one direction that energy transition entrepreneurs are envisioning the future of next-generation electrification.
“I’m convinced, whether it’s microgrid or off-grid or a DC grid, that these solutions are necessary,” Vic Shao, the man who helped found startups Amply Power and Green Charge Network and now is undertaking his latest company, DC Grid, said in an exclusive interview with EnergyTech.com.
“There is a demand out there that utilities are not solving for.”
Indeed, many microgrids are islandable and can operate during power outages, but most are interconnected into the main utility grid. The queue and permitting for these types of connected projects is now taking two to five or more years to progress from design and application to operations and commissioning.
Time is money, and frustrating five-year or longer queues are not cash well spent. While many innovative minds and companies are trying to shorten the interconnection queue, Shao founded DC Grid with the idea of eliminating the middleman, so to speak.
The new company is only a few months old, so no real details are available, but its creator hopes to focus on strategically sited and DC power generation projects which don’t’ require a utility interconnection and are close to the customer load.
“As a business, four to seven years is not an acceptable answer” to getting projects from start to finish,” Shao recalled. “I ultimately came to the conclusion, after 15 years of begging, begging, begging, that there had to be an alternative to utilities and regulators. This was too hard.”
Life as a serial entrepreneur: The next big thing
The difficulty that frustrated Shao is not to say that Amply Power and Green Charging Network were unsuccessful. Hardly. The opposite actually is true as both companies grew attractive enough to be acquired by global players.
EV charging technology firm Amply Power was acquired by energy giant bp and rebranded as bp pulse fleet, while energy storage provider Green Charge Networks was bought by French multinational Engie and rebranded as Engie Storage.
Shao’s track record as a front-level serial entrepreneur and company inventor is rock solid. He is the first to admit, however, that growing pains can be tough and he learned a lot of hard lessons on the way to successfully selling the early companies he built.
DC Grid Inc. could learn from those experiences in ways to take advantage of a radically different energy landscape then even a decade ago, Shao hopes. Distributed energy installation, such as solar and batteries and microgrids, is drawing billions of dollars’ worth of investment and build-out.
So intriguing that even Tesla, proponent of the original AC power, might agree.
“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration,” the Serbian genius once was quoted as saying.
Good vibrations, that is. Direct current might finally have its day in the sun. Shao and others believe DC power might provide the cost-effective answer in this era of extreme weather events and historic peak demand.
AC was the current best suited for the circumstances of an earlier and growing national grid, because it made stepping voltage up and down easier, but DC might make more sense closer to home in the modern evolution of how power generation is sited; that’s Shao’s thinking, for sure.
Europe already utilizes high voltage direct current transmission to move utility-scale renewable power such as wind generation long distances to substations.
“With 90% efficiency (from direct current), the need for AC no longer is necessary,” he told EnergyTech. Look at the resources now rising into dominance: “Solar is DC-based, computers, cell phones and EV charging—all DC-based consumption.
“What is a main failure point in solar?” he pointed out. “It’s the inverters” which are only there to convert DC to AC.
Shao is not alone: Others believe DC is the future of off grid
Off-grid solar and microgrids are rising in prominence, and many experts at last year’s RE+ convention touted the need to adopt DC at greater scale.
“DC is the future,” Gary Oppedahl, vice president of emerging technology at Block Energy, a distributed energy resource (DER), front-of-the-meter platform, said at last year’s RE+ Conference in Las Vegas.
In the past year, retail warehouse provider Costco announced plans for an off-grid solar power installation to provide charging for its electrified fleet.
Not all the off-grid power generation DERs have to be microgrids, either. Those microgrids require integration software and controllers and, often, a utility grid connection.
“The simpler the better,” Shao said. “The one issue I have with microgrids, and I’ve done quite a few, is that they are incredibly complex. A microgrid controller must be involved, and if connected to the grid, there are lot of additional rules.”
The DC off-grid alternative?
“No grid, no AC, no utilities, no (interconnection) regulators,” he added. “Assembly on site.”
Shao is also exploring the potential of using renewable natural gas (RNG) to fuel the off-grid power generation distributed energy resources (DERs). Using RNG involves other challenges such as developing delivery routes to and from biodigester facilities, but he sees prime power potential in an energy-dense resource as opposed to the intermittencies of renewables like solar.
RNG utilizes food waste and other methods to provide a lower carbon alternative to methane gas and diesel. It’s early days for this technology, and time will tell whether the RNG infrastructure develops enough to support off-grid and microgrid on-site power to the level needed to scale up.
“It’s a balancing act,” Shao admitted. “There’s no definite answer to all of this. How many electrification projects will that unlock? How much CO2 or NOX (nitrogen oxide) will be reduced compared to the alternative?”
Questions galore, but ones which he and others are confronting by the most direct means possible. Using direct current also may provide that distributed energy solution to carry the transition forward throughout the 21st century same as AC did for more than 100 years before that.
