IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2017 - 75

A microgrid is capable of supporting a predefined number of loads
but is typically not designed to operate indefinitely without being
connected to the traditional utility infrastructure.
All of these stakeholders will have a specific set of requirements that should be noted in a timely manner. Collectively, their voice is an input to the next stage in the process:
requirement definition.

Stakeholder Requirement Definition
This systems engineering process step involves taking into
account the voice of all stakeholder parties identified in the
previous step. In the context of deploying a utility-based
microgrid platform, this definition process will yield welldefined and organized requirements fitting into one of the
following subsets (see Figure 3):
✔ operational, such as temporal performance requirements for energy management operations (e.g., switching, load dispatch,and generation dispatch)
✔ regulatory, such as predetermined $/kWh rates
✔ financial, such as a predefined threshold for return on
investment.
To illustrate, let's consider the voice of military base leaders and operators when planning a microgrid. Their missionspecific requirements may include the following:
✔ improved energy security: powering mission support
facilities during a utility grid outage
✔ improved energy resiliency: independently powering
mission support facilities during any event
✔ higher energy reliability: to mitigate the effects of
renewable generation's intermittent output that challenge grid stability
✔ higher power quality: to mitigate the effects of renewable generation's intermittent output that challenge
power quality
✔ reduced load on the utility: when regional energy supplier infrastructure cannot keep up with mission demand
✔ increased grid functionality: when secure energy management functionality is required by mission objectives
✔ lower electricity costs: to make best use of distributed
generation resources, including renewables, as part of
an optimum generation asset portfolio
✔ cybersecurity: proper certification levels required.

inflating the initial investment, which, in turn, threatens the
financial viability of the project.
To manage this complexity, we suggest observing fundamental principles of quality function deployment. Although
not developed in the context of traditional systems engineering, careful integration of its tools has yielded positive results
in many industries, including defense and aeronautical. It was
originally developed in Japan in the late 1960s for the automotive industry. Its real purpose and benefit is not captured
by its direct translation to the English language. In North
America, some users have given these methodology alternative names more reflective of its use, such as customer driven
product/project development.
As it applies to developing microgrid platforms, we conceptualize this methodology as a structured process for planning and
designing the platform. It emphasizes the thorough understanding of what stakeholders want or need. Then, those stakeholder
requirements are translated into prioritized technical solutions
for use in designing the system's architecture. A complex matrix,
which some call the house of quality, is the primary framework
for this evaluation. Figure 4 offers the house of quality matrix
tool condensed for use in our microgrid application.
Method users have shaped their specific process steps
according to their project or product offering. We suggest
observing the following sequence:
✔ List stakeholder requirements: These elements are output from the previous stakeholder requirement definition step and represent the whats.

Regulatory
Financial

Operational

Requirement Analysis
A stakeholder's ability to own and operate local generation
for implementing the first two requirements of energy security and resiliency already has the potential for conflicting
with regulatory frameworks in some jurisdictions. Further,
the need for resiliency dictates a distributed control architecture that intrinsically is more costly and has potential for
july/august 2017

To Requirement Analysis
Process

figure 3. The stakeholder requirement category.
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