Montgomery County is a sizeable government that found itself with an equally sizeable problem. With 9,000 employees and 400 buildings totaling 9 million square feet, the Maryland county has a budget as large or bigger than many states. Bordering Washington, D.C., with over 1 million people, the county represents 16% of the state’s economy. Even … [Read more...]
A global electricity trend towards clean, resilient and renewable distributed power is underway. This trend is driven by the increased threat of climate change, increasingly old and costly utility infrastructure, and the advent of new software and hardware that enable an affordable, distributed energy future. As customers adopt energy saving and … [Read more...]
Microgrids-as-a-Service (MaaS) offers the most viable solution for the various challenges confronting the microgrid industry and related attempts to accelerate energy access to people and small businesses in remote regions of the developing world. It is an emerging cloud-based business model, driven by microgrid technology innovations, … [Read more...]
Across the Nation, in every community, there are individuals in hospitals, nursing homes, and other long-term care facilities dependent on power for their well-being. And healthcare facility power outages are becoming more of a concern as the threat from natural disasters grows, and energy infrastructure ages. A wide range of facilities provide … [Read more...]
Remote regions of the world such as the circumpolar Arctic, once viewed as disadvantaged due to a lack of conventional grid infrastructure, have proven to be fertile ground for microgrid innovation. This innovation flows from both the challenges associated with providing reliable electricity without the benefit of traditional transmission and … [Read more...]
Local governments, military officials, university heads, utilities, water and waste facilities, as well as executives overseeing hospitals, transit, airports, and port authorities are exploring the feasibility of microgrids for their operations and seeking relevant examples to emulate. This microgrid guide, developed by Rima Oueid, a senior adviser … [Read more...]
California’s major wildfires in 2017 and 2018 resulted in the bankruptcy of Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and the expansion of utility policies to shut off portions of the distribution grid during times of high fire risk. These intentional power shut-offs are expected to average 2–5 days, Concerns about the shutdowns have prompted proposed … [Read more...]
Multi-user microgrids (MUMs) are an emerging approach to electricity service that allows neighboring customers to obtain greater resilience in electricity service, from a set of locallyinstalled distributed energy resources (DERs) of their own choice (sometimes including solar energy and energy storage), through joint participation in a power … [Read more...]
Power outages have both acute and long-term impacts on public health and the critical infrastructure that supports the achievement of public health goals. Acute, immediate impacts tend to grab headlines. In November 2012, Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge knocked out power along the coast in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, disabling primary and backup … [Read more...]
For many agricultural and food processing companies in California, operating at the grid edge has become an increasingly risky proposition. To start, the quality and stability of the energy is often poor in agricultural regions. Further, the cost of that energy is unpredictable and continues to see increases. The Public Safety Power Shutoff … [Read more...]
There are multiple approaches to funding microgrid projects. Eric Dupont, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at PowerSecure, discusses why CAPEX versus OPEX become important considerations in this interview with Yasmin Ali, Microgrid Knowledge contributor.
California often serves as a bellwether and now it’s ringing an alarm about a new electric grid vulnerability. While hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and tornadoes have been chief perpetrators of widespread US power outages in the past, an even more devastating foe has emerged in California: wildfires. As other states brace for the impact of climate change, they watch California and wonder: Are they next? But there may be a cost-effective solution —the energy-as-a-service microgrid. Download the new special report from Microgrid Knowledge and AlphaStruxure that highlights how this increasingly popular model works, and what benefits it can offer your business.
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