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Long Island Village Plans Microgrid; Issues RFP

March 22, 2015

A Long Island, N.Y. village is seeking engineering help to build a microgrid that will vie for funding in the $40 million NY Prize competition.

Elisa Wood

Village Hall, Freeport, NY. Credit: Ira Goldstein

A Long Island, N.Y. village is seeking engineering help to build a microgrid that will vie for funding in the $40 million NY Prize competition.

Freeport, a village of about 40,000 people in Nassau County, wants to build a microgrid to help secure power supply should another disaster hit like Superstorm Sandy, which walloped the village’s electric distribution system in 2012.

The New York State Energy & Research Development Authority is now offering up to $5 million in feasibility funds in the first phase of the NY Prize competition. Those bids are due to NYSERDA May 15.

Because of the tight NY Prize deadline, Freeport seeks bids for engineering services no later than 4 p.m. ET, Tuesday, March 31.

Read more about microgrid opportunities on MicrogridKnowledge.com.

Freeport, located on southern Long Island, already operates its own distribution system along with two power plants that are interconnected with the Long Island Power Authority’s transmission system.

The village seeks proposals that address all phases of its microgrid project, but may contract with bid winners for individual phases or some combination of the phases.

Freeport will evaluate bids based on a 100 point scale, with the heaviest weight going to three categories: bidder experience developing a microgrid, investment backing, and total project cost. Each of these categories can receive up to 20 points.

The microgrid proposals also can win 1o points each for:

Team experience on Long Island, including a local presence.
Team skill in comprehensive development with personnel having experience in power engineering, commercial engineering, clean energy technology, transmission and distribution utility operations, working with regulators and project finance.
Team includes an experienced developer with a proven track record developing infrastructure projects.
A dedicated development platform focused on the implementation of microgrids within New York State.

The request for proposals is available at here.

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About the Author

Elisa Wood | Editor-in-Chief

Elisa Wood is an award-winning writer and editor who specializes in the energy industry. She is chief editor and co-founder of Microgrid Knowledge and serves as co-host of the publication’s popular conference series. She also co-founded RealEnergyWriters.com, where she continues to lead a team of energy writers who produce content for energy companies and advocacy organizations.

She has been writing about energy for more than two decades and is published widely. Her work can be found in prominent energy business journals as well as mainstream publications. She has been quoted by NPR, the Wall Street Journal and other notable media outlets.

“For an especially readable voice in the industry, the most consistent interpreter across these years has been the energy journalist Elisa Wood, whose Microgrid Knowledge (and conference) has aggregated more stories better than any other feed of its time,” wrote Malcolm McCullough, in the book, Downtime on the Microgrid, published by MIT Press in 2020.

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