Downtime on the microgrid : architecture, electricity, and smart city islands / Malcolm McCullough.

Author/creator McCullough, Malcolm author.
Format Book
PublicationCambridge, MA : MIT Press, [2020]
Descriptionpages cm.
Subjects

SeriesInfrastructures
Contents At the edge -- Electricity's eras -- Smart green blues -- Microgrid institutions -- Architecture's grid edge -- Situated interactions -- To island.
Summary Resilience now matters most, and most resilience is local-even for that most universal, foundational modern resource: the electric power grid. Today that technological marvel is changing more rapidly than it has for a lifetime, and in our new grid awareness, community microgrids have become a fascinating catalyst for cultural value change. In 'Downtime on the Microgrid', Malcolm McCullough offers a thoughtful counterpoint to the cascade of white papers on smart clean infrastructure. Writing from an experiential perspective, McCullough avoids the usual smart city futurism, technological solutionism, policy acronyms, green idealism, critical theory jargon, and doomsday prepping to provide new cultural context for a subject long a favorite theme in science and technology studies. 0McCullough describes the three eras of North American electrification: innovation, consolidation, and decentralization. He considers the microgrid boom and its relevance to the built environment as "architecture's grid edge." Finally, he argues that resilience arises from clusters; although a microgrid is often described as an island, future resilience will require archipelagos-clusters of microgrids, with a two-way, intermittent connectiveness that is very different from the always-on, top-down technofuture we may be expecting. With 'Downtime on the Microgrid', McCullough rises above techno-hype to find something good about the smart city and reassuring about local resilience.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references and index.
Genre/formPopular works.
LCCN 2019018828
ISBN9780262043519 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN0262043513

Availability

Library Location Call Number Status Item Actions
Joyner General Stacks TK1006 .M38 2020 ✔ Available Place Hold