POWER May 2016 - 38

DISTRIBUTED ENERGY RESOURCES
U.S. Microgrid Market Development
Source: POWER
Microgrids have been around for decades, but today, more potential customers,
owners, technologies, and vendors than ever are part of the market. Increased interest
in this special grid resource means there's more competition, which is generally
a good thing, but there are also new challenges.
Gail Reitenbach, PhD
"
You have to have some serious staying
power " to be in the microgrids market,
observed David B. Chiesa, senior director,
global business development at S&C
Electric Co.
Chiesa, who served as summit chair for
the Infocast Microgrid Markets Summit East
(Microgrids Summit) in mid-March, noted
that projections for the sector have been
too optimistic. We are still seeing " pilots, "
and new microgrids are all one-offs, where
the pieces are still being fitted together like
a jigsaw puzzle. Much of the difficulty, he
suggested, is that you can't be an expert in
just one area to be successful with microgrid
projects, because they involve generation,
storage, controls, and maintenance.
Microgrids Old and New
Microgrids have been around for many decades,
predominently on educational, medical,
and corporate campuses (see sidebar,
" Different Microgrids for Different Purposes " ).
The motive for developing a campus
microgrid in the past was usually some combination
of lowering energy costs with onsite
combined heat and power (CHP), providing
38
reliable power to critical loads, and, less often,
enabling " island " operation (disconnecting
from the larger distribution grid) during
times of grid service disruption, although
some were originally designed to operate disconnected
from the grid most of the time.
More recently, interest in new and different
configurations of microgrids has come in
basically two flavors.
For geographically islanded customers-
whether on an actual island or in a remote
region like Alaska (see sidebar " Alaska Goes
Big for Microgrids " )-microgrids, often with
at least some renewable power to mitigate the
cost of long-distance fuel delivery, can offer
the most economic way to provide electricity
service. Elsewhere, military installations and
civilian communities (especially those that
have experienced lengthy outages as a result
of intense storms) have been the driving forces
behind studies, pilots, and deployments of
microgrids that combine newer forms of energy
generation, storage, and delivery.
The diversity of goals, components, and
configurations of newer microgrid concepts
means that microgrid definitions vary. Many
proponents would say that a microgrid must
www.powermag.com
Different Microgrids for
Different Purposes
In a February interview with POWER at
IHS CERAWeek, ABB Chief Technology
Officer Bazmi Husain called microgrids
" one of the most fundamental changes "
in the power industry. Different geographies
will use different fuels and technologies
in their microgrids, he said, just
as some will be isolated and others will
be connected to larger grids (though still
capable of islanding).
Microgrids, Husain said, are a great
solution " to quickly reach those who
don't have access to electricity today. "
That includes India, where " upward of
three million people do not have access
to electricity. "
The business case is strongest in developed
and developing countries for
campuses or hospitals, which have a
need for high reliability, he said.
POWER | May 2016
http://www.powermag.com
POWER May 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of POWER May 2016
