The Rise of Microgrid Projects: From Remote Communities to New York

Our work with microgrid projects has primarily been in improving reliability of remote communities and end of line backup power for institutions to solve community energy efficiency challenges, blackouts, and incorporating demand management strategies for the utility (Demand response using Open ADR). End-of-line are the most vulnerable as there is a single radial connection to a whole community that is subject to blackouts during the winter months whereas doubling up a line is too costly and impractical or would carry the same systemic effects. 

We are sharing this story about ‘How microgrids are positioned for a bright future ‘ from Energy Manager Today because it illustrates how microgrids are being utilized to provide energy reliability solutions such as the example referenced of a small upstate New York town and a commercial dairy. It also highlights a few of the key challenges which include the high upfront cost, and monetizing the system due to difficulty to quantify the reliability and resilience benefits. 

These limitations can be overcome as utilities find a way to share data on system reliability and to demonstrate the total cost of ownership using non-traditional radial power systems vs microgrids so that microgrid’s business case can be properly assessed. Utilities often have fully depreciated assets in their system that may not have changed in 50 to 100 years while installing new generation, storage or control technology is often seen as much more costly. In addition, because microgrids are “non-standard”, a utility has difficulty committing the management and operational funding for the asset. 

Electric vehicles, mature battery technology, high efficiency solar panels, and hydrogen are the newest players who are pushing the concept of mobile power and microgrid integration forward at a very rapid pace. Environmentally, as climate change starts to impact the globe, the need for additional localized cooling and heating power that are not subject to brownouts or blackouts will become more in demand. 

Our work developing microgrid controllers and implementing them in existing infrastructure are proving to be worth the investment showing utilities how back feeding storage can delay capital infrastructure upgrades while also providing localized backup power without using a diesel generator. The future is happening now!

From the Energy Manager Today story:

“Microgrids are not just hot in New York. Utility Dive reported this week on a big research effort by GTM Research on the distributed energy. Microgrids – which are systems that provide electricity to campuses or groups of buildings independent of but generally in coordination with the traditional grid – is one of the sectors covered. The story says that the researchers found that microgrids are a bit behind the energy storage market in their evolution. It is doing all it can to catch up, however: GTM expects it to grow 267 percent between last year and 2020 when it will be worth $829 million.”