IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2017 - 81

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illustrative use case. This technology center is located in Bloomington, Minnesota, (a suburb just south
of Minneapolis) and a few miles west of the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport.

Motivation and Reasoning Behind Building the South Campus
Why build a microgrid? Three main motivators need to be considered when analyzing this question:
1) economics, 2) reliability, and 3) a desire for green/renewable energy. These reasons were taken into
consideration while scoping out the South Campus project. Regarding economics, it can be extremely
expensive to build a mission-critical facility, such as a data
center, and include the backup generation and other equipment
necessary to keep the facility running in the event of a grid
interruption. Often times, the backup generation, controls,
and other equipment are stranded costs for the facility. The
backup generation infrastructure is used only to provide shortduration backup power. This is typically imposed by the cost
of running the backup generation and various environmental
protection rules, such as limitations on running diesel generation for extended periods of time. Changing this paradigm
required seeking out different types of generation and employing different control schemes within the
building to better utilize the available generation and balance the building load with what is available
at the time.
The second motivator to create a microgrid is high reliability. This is obviously a strong motivation for a mission-critical system. The host organization must maintain constant availability and
uptime of its data centers and office facilities to allow staff to work through any type of grid interruption. The building requirement to remain available at all times is a prime motivator to seek out
even better ways to ensure uninterrupted service.
Finally, with environmental stewardship being an important objective, the building had to provide its services using green and renewable energies. This can be difficult for data center operations, which are required by their very nature to be always available, day and night, regardless of

Illustrating Its Concept,
Functionality, and
Business Case

july/august 2017

ieee power & energy magazine

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2017

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IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2017 - Cover3
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2017 - Cover4
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