Efficient Plant June 2021 - 26

feature | solution focus
Microgrid
Accelerates
Low-Carbon Future
Microgrid manages
power eff ectively for
energy transition.
DEVELOPMENT OF A microgrid at its Arecibo, Puerto Rico,
plant provided power-management company Eaton, Beachwood,
OH (eaton.com), with essential information on how the company
approaches energy transition and accelerates toward a low-carbon
future. John Vernacchia, the company's Energy Transition Segment
Director, provided insight about how the technology helps industrial
operations safely add more renewables and energy storage, helping
operations become more sustainable and resilient.
How is the energy transition aff ecting industrial operations?
We see the energy transition as a massive transformation-one of
the biggest changes happening in the world today. For industrials,
it presents new opportunities to manage power far more eff ectively
and get much more function from existing energy infrastructure.
It's worth looking at the energy transition itself, which I see as
being driven by three key trends:
more renewable (and local) energy sources coming online
increasing electrifi cation as we shiſt to new sources of electricity
and rely more upon digitalized tools
changing structure of electricity distribution, as we move from a
centralized to a decentralized model of energy generation.
We've developed an Everything as a Grid approach to the energy
transition to help users accelerate decarbonization, boost resilience,
reduce energy costs, and create new revenue streams. Th e approach
helps customers optimally deploy distributed energy resources
and support electric-vehicle charging infrastructure, while better
26 | EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM
managing existing electrical infrastructure and preparing for future
requirements.
We recently announced a microgrid project at our Arecibo manufacturing
plant in Puerto Rico, where we make circuit breakers for
a range of applications. By integrating solar generation and battery
storage, the microgrid enables us to reduce our carbon footprint
and demand on local energy infrastructure, while improving energy
resilience by allowing critical processes to continue if the local
electrical grid is down.
What can industrial enterprises do to make the most of the
energy transition?
Th e new power paradigm created by the energy transition is
enabling plants of all sizes to readily generate and store their own
power to optimize costs, lower carbon footprint, advance resilience
and, in some cases, reduce reliance on the grid. To realize these benefi
ts, traditional electrical infrastructure must be modernized to:
 integrate renewables in the energy system and consume more
self-generated power to lower the carbon footprint
advance resilience by locally generating and managing electricity
optimize energy use, cutting energy costs even as energy needs
increase by leveraging digitalization and IoT to collect data that enables
smarter, more informed decisions
generate new revenue by selling excess energy back to the local grid.
For more than a century, the electrical systems powering industrial
operations were designed based on historical data, meeting legacy
JUNE 2021
http://www.eaton.com http://www.EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM
Efficient Plant June 2021

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