We asked you to say whether you live in an urban, rural or remote community. Of course there are lots of differences, but we are talking about the electricity networks! These differences are especially important when you are considering options like microgrids.

Urban

We define an urban community as “having a complex electricity network that is closely connected to a mix of residential, commercial and industrial loads. Not a lot of access to vacant land.”

An urban community usually has more than one connection to the wider grid. Each street is close to lots of other streets, and the system is interconnected or “meshed” together. This means if there is failure in one part of the network, a switch can be closed and power can come from the other end of the street. The network provider manages miles of low voltage lines in urban areas, with distribution transformers (sometimes called distribution substations) shared amongst 50-150 houses.

The distribution transformers are connected to medium voltage feeders that come from the local zone substations. These might serve 20,000 households and it is likely that each system has alternative connections to be supplied by a different zone substation if necessary. The energy use in your urban community will depend on the housing type, the climate and also on the level of commercial and industrial activity.

Rural

We define an a rural community as “having a simpler electrical network with fewer connections to the main grid. Our community is surrounded by countryside.”

Many rural communities are at the end of a line, or “radial”, rather than meshed together with several connections to the main grid. On radial systems a failure can leave people without electricity until the problem is fixed.

Electricity networks try to provide alternative supplies if the distances are short enough so it is possible that your community has a medium voltage feeder at each end of town. Only one will operate at any time. The zone substation/s that supplies the medium voltage feeder(s) could be many miles away near a larger population centre.

A rural community probably has some low voltage systems in the denser parts of the town where houses are close together, where there may be several connections to the grid.. Outlying farms and houses will have distribution transformers that only serve 1-10 buildings.

Remote

We define an a remote community as “having an electricity network that is not connected to the main grid and only serves your community or a small group of people.”

It is more difficult for us to guess what sort of electricity grid you have because remote grids come in all shapes and sizes and could be operated by you, by your government or by a private contractor. Remote communities are already served by microgrids.