Cutting-Edge Microgrid Projects Still Popping up in the United States

Peter Asmus, Navigant Research

The current edition of Navigant Research’s Microgrid Deployment Tracker gives credence to the idea that the Asia Pacific region may emerge as the market leader over the long term, with data collected from projects and project portfolios representing 47 percent of total global capacity as compared to North America’s 44 percent total global capacity market share. At present, however, North America remains king when it comes to actual operating projects. If looking at microgrids currently online, North America still leads by holding a nearly identical market share (66 percent) compared with data presented in the 2Q 2014 Tracker update (65 percent).

I want to highlight two project entries that show how the United States, due in part to new programs promoting community resilience, is pushing the envelope on both technology and business models.

Blazing the Trail

The first project, located on the East Coast, is a transportation microgrid known as NJ TransitGrid and located in the New Jersey Transit system’s service area. Beyond being America’s third-largest transportation system and serving nearly 900,000 passengers daily, the stretch of rail covered by the project is both an important access point to Manhattan and New York and is one of the most at risk for flooding. Existing railroad right-of-ways could be used to connect distributed generation (DG) from small wind, solar PV, and fuel cells to elevated power substations and energy storage. All of these components will be managed by smart grid technologies to integrate renewables and island the entire system during harsh storms such as Hurricane Sandy. It is anticipated that the system’s total generation capacity will eventually reach 104 MW, making it one of the largest microgrids in the world. New Jersey state officials expect the project to have sufficient capacity to power up rail stations between the cities of Newark and Hoboken, which are approximately 10 miles apart.

The second project is on the West Coast and is known as the Salem Smart Power Center. This project is an example of a partnership approach to development with an investor-owned utility (Portland General Electric) looking to vendors such as Eaton to help integrate battery energy storage solutions to help address the impacts of customer-owned solar PV on the utility’s distribution grid. The project, which incorporates 5 MW of conventional DG, solar PV, and a 5 MW battery, also sought to increase reliability for a mix of business (data center), institutional (National Guard), and residential customers. The resulting energy storage system from Eaton provides seamless support for loads in the event of an upstream outage. The intelligent energy storage system works with standby generators to create a high-reliability zone consisting of a feeder supplying community customers. The energy storage system supports the microgrid for several minutes while generators are started, creating a backup power supply, with tests showing the capability of carrying the entire load during transition to island mode.

Unlike the majority of microgrids deployed to date in the United States, which tend to focus on campus operations, the Power Center is instead seeking to bolster the utility’s reliability. As such, it is classified as a utility distribution microgrid (UDM). One noteworthy factoid derived from the newly published Microgrid Deployment Tracker is that such UDMs now represent 16 percent of total microgrid operating, planned, and proposed capacity, a segment category ranking only behind remote systems, which are largely deployed in the developing world and unique markets such as Alaska.

Peter Asmus is a principal research analyst for Navigant Research.  This blog originally appeared on Navigant Research’s blog.