Financials
For a uGrid to be effective, it must be cost competitive with the electric company. This means a blend of financial realities in the development and deployment of a uGrid control system. For example, electricity prices change relative to the time of day, a control system should be able to accommodate these changes into it's everyday operation. Let's look at some of the realities we can expect for a uGrid.
Home Electrical Needs
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Michigan homes use an average of 9,000 kWh ( https://goo.gl/qhMgJ6 ) annually. With a 10% bump to account for cooling costs during July and August, we can expect 825 kWh per month or 30 kWh per day per house.
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Average cost of Residential electricity in Midland Michigan is 13.71¢/kWh
Solar power needed for our micro grid is around 660kWh per day with 70kW peak power generation. Based on the geographic location of Midland Michigan Solar Insolation (the amount of solar irradiance that is incident on a fixed area over a period) is around 4.5kWh/m^2/per day. Including the efficiency of the solar panel the amount of solar insolation of a panel would be around 0.63kWh/m^2/per day. Rating of a regular 2mx1m solar panel would be around 0.3kW and now taking into consideration the solar insolation we would need around 525 solar panels.
Price for 525 solar panel rated at 0.3kW is $200,000 (this includes installation and labor price)
Land required to place this solar panels is around 0.13 acres and prices for a 0.13-acre land is around $30,000.
Solar inverter costs around $25,000
Total cost for 525 solar panel installation would come to $255,000
Federal and state incentive for solar is estimated to be around 30%. That brings down our total cost for solar power to be $178,500
Wind power –
Midland Michigan doesn’t fall under great wind power generation area but for the project we have to include a wind turbine to generate Microgrid’s 40% of the power we would need the wind turbine to output 250kWh per day.
The price for a wind turbine generating around 250kWh per day is $500,000. The Federal and state incentive for wind power is estimated to be around 25% and that brings our total cost for wind power generation to be $375,000
The uGrid Hardware
Boring Spreadsheet
Payback Period
Simple Payback Period -
Simple Payback period in number of years can be calculated by taking the total investment and dividing by the amount of money saved annually
For our calculation, the total amount for investment is $392,500 and annual saving for the entire grid can be $16,830.
By this we can get our payback period to be around 23.3 years.
Average commercial mall will be using around 260kWh per day on an average and this load will be more focused during lunch/dinner time and peak shopping period.
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Average cost of electricity for a commercial center near Midland Michigan is around 10.02¢/kWh
Average small scaled industry will be using around 550kWh per day on an average and this load will be distributed throughout the day based on the operating machines.
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Average cost of electricity for a Industrial use near Midland Michigan is around 07.62¢/kWh
