Michael Fischette, CEO of Concord Engineering, sees nothing but good news for the future of the microgrid market. He sat down with Elisa Wood, editor-in-chief of Microgrid Knowledge, during the Microgrid 2022 conference to explain why.
“We see microgrids popping up everywhere, in every sector, whether it’s health care or military or city microgrids. And now what I’m really excited about is the birth of a real awareness of industrials,” Fischette says. “The private industrials are now really looking at microgrids and it’s very, very exciting.”
Fischette says that this growth in the industrial and manufacturing sector is being driven by two key factors: the need for resilience and decarbonization demands. He says that resilience for today’s industrial operations means using multiple fuels and multiple technologies, not just connecting to the grid like they’ve done in the past. “They’re looking for multi distributed energy resource systems,” he says.
Fischette also says he’s pleased to see more awareness of the potential of the nation’s natural gas infrastructure. “We have to really think about the natural gas infrastructure,” Fischette says. “Not the natural gas itself, but the infrastructure. Those pipelines can be completely decarbonized. A decarbonized (electric) grid will never be resilient.”
Diversity will be key to future energy resilience, according to Fischette, and that diversity includes hydrogen. “Some states are very aggressive with blue hydrogen — making hydrogen from natural gas — and then using carbon capture,” Fischette says. He adds that in the coming decades he hopes to see hydrogen flowing through the existing natural gas infrastructure. To reach our decarbonization and resiliency goals, Fischette says, “you just have to take on every technology you can and embrace it.”
Learn more about how the microgrid market is changing by viewing Microgrid 2022: Microgrids as Climate Heroes. Videos of each session will be available for free as part of the Microgrid Knowledge video library.
