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The future of micro-grids in Ecuador

Abstract:

Since in 1882 the American inventor Thomas Alva Edison developed and installed the first large power station in the world in New York [1], the processes of generation, transportation, distribution and marketing of electricity have been governed by the pace of demand and the exponential increase in the consumption of electric energy on a social scale. During the first half of the 20th century, the use of oil as the energy carrier par excellence was enshrined and with it an increasingly centralized generation system was formed, based on monumental thermoelectric plants, with extensive transmission networks and a complex managed distribution system with network operators specialized in maintaining the balance between supply and demand of energy permanently. For the second half of the twentieth century in the first world countries, the centralized systems of generation, transport, and distribution of electricity, were reaffirmed as a technical paradigm capable of guaranteeing and extending the electric service in the internal plane of the countries and transferring the national borders; but the successive energy and environmental crises motivated by the over-exploitation of natural resources, has called into question the capacity of the current energy matrix to continue supporting the current conditions of the economic and social development of humanity. The successive increase in the price of fossil fuels and the pressing situation derived from the environmental impacts associated with the widespread use of energy resources that are part of the planet's endowment [2] have accelerated the irruption of renewable energy sources in the world. energy …