Ta'u now hosts a solar power and battery storage-enabled microgrid that can supply nearly 100 percent of the island's power needs from renewable energy, providing a cost-saving alternative to diesel, removing the hazards of power intermittency and making outages a thing of the past. . In recent weeks, the 17-square-mile island, with about 1,000 inhabitants, was equipped with a 1. 4-megawatt (MW) microgrid powered by more than 5,000 solar panels. Ta'u microgrid. . A microgrid, regarded as one of the cornerstones of the future smart grid, uses distributed generations and information technology to create a widely distributed automated energy delivery network.
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