EN-03 · 02 Energy
Neighborhood DC microgrid
A handful of roofs, a shared battery, and a simple agreement — enough to keep lights, radios and a well pump alive when the utility is not.
Origin
Island, camp and rural cooperative practice
Materials
- Photovoltaic arrays sized to critical loads, not to a wish list
- A shared battery bank with a clear charge controller
- A written load-shedding order everyone has signed
Method
- 01
List the loads that must not die: water, communications, a clinic fridge, lighting. Everything else is optional.
- 02
Size generation and storage to those loads on a dark week, not a sunny afternoon.
- 03
Keep the neighborhood spine in DC where you can. Inverters are useful; they are also a single point of failure.
- 04
Write the agreement before the first panel is bolted: who pays, who maintains, who is shed first when the bank is low.
- 05
Drill a blackout once a season. A microgrid that has never been islanded is a decoration.
What this makes possible
- Critical services that survive a grid outage
- A shared asset instead of twenty undersized island systems
- A civic practice of energy, not only a technical one
This is a field record, not a permit. Adapt to local law, climate and skill. If you have run this method, send what you learned.