The Rapid Integration and Commercialization Unit (RICU) at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar is a living laboratory for testing how leading LDES technologies can be integrated into utility-scale microgrid applications. The RICU is a venture between Indian Energy, the California Energy Commission (CEC), and the DOD to validate LDES technologies.

Phase 2 of research at the RICU was funded by the CEC in May 2024 through a $4.85 million agreement between the CEC and Indian Energy to demonstrate the capabilities of LDES technologies. The partnership with Indian Energy lays the foundation for deployment on CEC grants and DOD installations.

Indian Energy is a Native American-owned microgrid developer and integrator with a history of helping Tribes and the military establish energy independence. High energy costs and unreliable power are common challenges faced by sovereign territories. Microgrids can help provide resilience and predictable energy pricing in these areas. Maada’oozh, LLC, a Native American-owned energy and environmental services company, is providing the procurement, logistics, and maintenance services for Indian Energy and has been working closely with ESS to integrate the ESS Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) into the RICU.

Over the next six months, project partners will demonstrate optimal use cases in the California energy market including solar peak shifting and grid ancillary services, after which time it will be placed into commercial operation. The RICU testing facility in Miramar, California includes a microgrid connected to a solar array and features multiple connection points for energy storage.

“Iron flow technology will provide safe, sustainable long-duration energy storage to Native communities across California and the United States,” said Nicole Reiter, Vice President of Development at Indian Energy. “We are pleased to partner with ESS to deploy this critical technology and ultimately deliver energy sovereignty to Native American communities throughout North America.”

“We are pleased that the California Energy Commission has chosen this project to demonstrate the critical role that long-duration energy storage and iron flow technology will play in delivering energy security to remote communities,” said Eric Dresselhuys, CEO of ESS. “We look forward to working with Indian Energy and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar to deploy this project and continue to build the clean, secure energy future.”

According to a recent California Energy Commission report, LDES resources could grow up to 37 GW by 2045, supporting the integration of intermittent renewable energy and enabling a decarbonized, affordable and reliable grid. ESS iron flow technology is already deployed in California, with projects installed at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and Burbank Water and Power (BWP), and additional deployments announced and underway both in California and worldwide.

“The CEC is proud to continue its close partnership with Indian Energy and the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar to advance long duration energy storage that can accelerate California’s clean energy progress,” said Jonah Steinbuck, Director of the R&D Division at CEC. “The Rapid Integration and Commercialization Unit is a uniquely capable facility for validating innovative long duration energy storage technologies and helping build the market confidence needed to scale these resources.”

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) issued an alert on June 4 to generation owners and transmission planners concerning resources — like solar, wind, and batteries — that use inverters to connect to the grid. These assets are increasingly the subject of reliability concerns because of their inability to withstand grid disturbances.

NERC found that 10 large-scale grid disturbances on the bulk power system since 2016 involved the “widespread and unexpected” reduction of nearly 15,000 MW of inverter-based resource output, including 10,000 MW in the past four years. Performing dynamic simulations of the bulk power system, in addition to improved interconnection and system studies, could solve the problem, they said.

“The significantly higher complexity and software-based nature of IBR modeling when compared to synchronous machine modeling necessitates an improvement in the fundamental principles of dynamic modeling to accurately capture the performance of IBR plants,” the NERC alert said.

Episode 67 of the Factor This! podcast features Ryan Quint, who oversees engineering and security integration for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which oversees the reliability of the bulk power system. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

NERC aims to gather responses from generation owners and transmission planners to eight proposed recommendations.

“When we have a normal grid event like that and we lose power from dozens of solar PV facilities, hundreds, or maybe even a thousand, inverters all at the same moment in time, that’s a potential recipe for a catastrophically bad day,” Ryan Quint, formerly NERC’s director of engineering and security integration, said on the Factor This! podcast in 2023.

NERC has issued more than a dozen reports in recent years diagnosing the shortfalls of IBRs. Some incidents are what the grid watchdog identifies as “faint signals” of broader implications. Others have teetered on complete grid collapse. 

The root causes of these disturbances typically involve a resource tripping offline due to a normal grid event: a tree falls on a powerline, a squirrel climbs on a substation bus, and so on. And these grid events happen every day. Due to the volume of grid disturbances, NERC’s postmortems are taking on a sterner tone. 

In its 2023 Southeast Utah Disturbance, which detailed the loss of 921 MW of solar generation from nine large-scale solar projects due to a normally-cleared fault on a faraway transmission circuit, NERC, in no uncertain terms, called out inverter original equipment manufacturers and generator owners for failing to address persistent, and previously identified, reliability issues.

Generator owners “are often not addressing performance issues that latently exist within the existing fleet,” NERC wrote, adding that in “all of the causes of abnormal performance in this event have been previously documented by NERC in past reports; however, actions were not taken.”

The disturbances have not, to this point, caused blackouts on their own. But that’s due to IBRs playing a relatively still-small role in the power system. As renewable energy rapidly displaces fossil-fueled, synchronous sources, those “faint signals” may lead to systemic failures if the industry does not remain vigilant in addressing these underlying reliability risks.

Efforts are underway to enhance the NERC reliability standards specifically related to IBR risks. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued Order 901, which directed NERC to develop new or modified reliability standards. NERC is developing a comprehensive work plan regarding standards development activities to meet this directive, and is also making changes to its registration criteria and process to bring smaller projects on the bulk power system under NERC jurisdiction per a separate FERC directive. 

Originally published in POWERGRID International.

He said the scale of data center customers’ ambitions is “10x” what it was just a couple years ago, adding that it’s no longer uncommon to see these companies asking for 500 MW of power for a single campus.

“It seems like an arms race right now to see who could be bigger,” said Schurr, who is Chief Commercial Officer at Enchanted Rock.

The current and future demands on the grid placed by data center, crypto and manufacturing customers present an opportunity for Enchanted Rock, a company with strong bona fides in onsite and backup power generation.

With all of this demand, Schurr noted many data centers will face delays for a firm grid connection while transmission and other infrastructure get built. Interconnection could take three years on the low end or up to ten years in certain markets.

Therefore, Enchanted Rock is promoting its “Bridge-to-Grid” microgrid solution, so data centers and other power-intensive industries can build, commission and operate on their own schedules.

The company’s solution is multi-purpose, depending on the status of power. When grid power is delayed, the microgrid provides prime power to the facility. With grid power, the microgrid can provide “flexible capacity,” backing up the facility and providing power during peak conditions to prevent grid emergencies.

Typically, data centers distribute diesel generators building-by-building throughout their campus for backup power, but these generators can’t support the grid like natural gas-fired generation can.

“For us to be able to get the power we need, we have to be somewhat flexible, self-sufficient during certain hours of the year,” said Schurr. “And you can’t do that with diesel generators.”

Natural gas-fired turbines or reciprocating engines would be the workhorse of Enchanted Rock’s microgrids. Schurr said the company evaluates about ten factors at a given site to determine the appropriate technology, including the duration of bridge power, environmental constraints, and space requirements.

Schurr said if long-term backup power is needed after interconnection, using reciprocating engines for bridge power offers the advantage of already having the equipment on-site, eliminating the need for additional diesel generators. This functionality, he noted, along with reciprocating engines’ ability to start quickly, often makes them the most cost-effective solution.

In general, Schurr said he’s starting to see a trend where companies are thinking about strategically locating their facilities near gas resources. Some data centers have asked Enchanted Rock to help them with site evaluations.

“I’d say some of the some of the more forward-thinking ones are absolutely looking at gas infrastructure as a siting criteria,” said Schurr. “They’ve never had to do that before.”

Enchanted Rock said it can go to market with the microgrid as a service, where the company owns the generating assets and provides bridge power and flexible/backup power needed during the grid connection period. Schurr noted that while it’s not common due to regulatory hurdles, some data centers do want to own the generating assets.

“We find a lot of them like it as a service, they like someone to take full accountability for building it, operating it, maintaining it, so that they can focus on just adding more data center capacity,” said Schurr.

Enchanted Rock hasn’t announced many data center projects yet. However, one of its microgrid projects will be fueled by renewable natural gas (RNG) to power a Microsoft data center in San Jose, California. The project aims to ensure maximum uptime for the facility by providing backup power during grid outages. Procurement of the RNG is scheduled to begin in early 2026. 

Schurr predicts that in five years, big data centers projects won’t be able to get a firm interconnect in most locations and will have to come with flexible generation component for peaking hours. Just another hint at the paradigm shift taking place in the power sector.

“I talked to the CFO of a big utility a few months ago,” he said. “And he said, [data centers] used to come in here asking for concessions. And now it’s like, ‘do you have power’?”

The project will generate more than half of the facility’s energy needs. The microgrid incorporates 5 MWac solar PV and approximately 1.1 MW of battery storage and existing onsite generators. The site will generate 10 GWh of energy annually, Eaton said.

Eaton highlighted the size of the clean energy microgrid system deployed with Enel, which the companies called a “first” in Puerto Rico. In addition to powering Eaton’s manufacturing facility, the microgrid will also support the regional power grid, the companies said. Eaton also implemented efficiency measures using its intelligent power management technologies to reduce its energy footprint.

“In our administration, we continue to focus on Puerto Rico’s energy transformation that promotes increased renewable energy generation,” said Governor Pedro Pierluisi. “I congratulate Eaton for continuing to invest in Puerto Rico and supporting this transformation with the building of a clean energy microgrid that will provide them with energy resiliency, while also reducing their carbon footprint. This is the type of project that we are working to see replicated throughout the island.”

Enel North America built, owns, and operates the system on behalf of Eaton. Enel North America financed the project under an energy-as-a-service model, shifting Eaton’s investment in the microgrid system from a capital to an operational expense. Eaton provided installation knowledge and technologies for the microgrid system, including its Power Xpert microgrid solutions and power distribution equipment. 

“As the impacts of climate change worsen, large energy users are stepping up to power their facilities sustainably,” said Matt Barnes, head of distributed energy solutions at Enel North America. “Enel is proud to partner with Eaton in building a future for manufacturing that reaches beyond facility walls to support energy resiliency for the broader community. The urgency to deploy microgrids—especially in regions with vulnerable electrical infrastructure—has never been greater, and Enel is delivering the clean and flexible systems that the energy transition requires.”

Originally published in Renewable Energy World.

The combination is intended to provide power, fuel-flexibility, and energy resiliency for commercial and industrial customers. The fuel-flexibility of the Mainspring generator allows customers to dynamically switch among multiple fuel options, including low- and zero-carbon fuels, without retrofit.

The collaboration between the two companies offers power solutions, along with Schneider’s microgrid designs, construction management, and project management experience.

“Commercial and industrial facilities are dealing with increasing demands for electricity,” said Bala Vinayagam, Senior Vice President, Microgrid Line of Business for Schneider Electric. “At the same time, organizations needing power have decarbonization goals. The Mainspring Linear Generator has the potential to serve a vital role in the transition to net zero.”

He added: “Customers are provided with a pioneering microgrid solution that can generate on-site power, adapt to an evolving grid landscape, and help them meet their decarbonization goals.”

The project is intended to showcase how leveraging existing infrastructure with electrolyzers and fuel cell technology may be able to create microgrids that deliver resilient power and can help safeguard businesses, communities and campuses from power disruptions.

This project takes water from Caltech’s service line and runs it through Bloom Energy’s solid oxide electrolyzer, which uses grid energy to create hydrogen. The resulting hydrogen is injected into Caltech’s natural gas infrastructure upstream of Bloom Energy fuel cells, creating up to a 20% blend of hydrogen and natural gas. All of this fuel blend is then converted into electricity with Bloom Energy’s fuel cells, and the electricity is then distributed for use on campus.

Unlocking Hydrogen’s Power Potential is an educational track at the POWERGEN International® exhibition and summit, which serves as an education, business and networking hub for electricity generators, utilities, and solution providers engaged in power generation. Join us from January 23-25, 2024, in New Orleans, Louisiana!

SoCalGas is working to help develop a state hydrogen blending standard by proposing pilot projects for approval by the CPUC. These projects could help to better understand how clean fuels like clean renewable hydrogen could be delivered through California’s natural gas system.

Earlier this year, SoCalGas unveiled its H2 Innovation Experience demonstration project designed to show the potential resiliency and reliability of a hydrogen microgrid.

Enchanted Rock, a microgrid developer, and U.S. Energy, a vertically integrated energy solutions provider in refined products, alternative fuels, and environmental credits, announced a partnership to provide backup power to the Microsoft facility.

The data center will use Enchanted Rock’s electrical resiliency-as-a-service and ultra-low-emission generators to avoid disruptions to their operations.

Unlocking Hydrogen’s Power Potential is an educational track at the POWERGEN International® exhibition and summit, which serves as an education, business and networking hub for electricity generators, utilities, and solution providers engaged in power generation. Join us from January 23-25, 2024, in New Orleans, Louisiana!

The resiliency microgrid, utilizing carbon-neutral RNG, is meant to ensure maximum uptime for Microsoft’s San Jose data center by providing backup power during grid outages. U.S. Energy will deliver RNG sourced from diverted food waste that would have otherwise ended up in landfills. The RNG will be injected upstream in the pipeline to match natural gas usage at the site and reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions, supporting Microsoft’s goal to become carbon-negative by 2030, the companies said.

The agreement also allows for flexibility in the amount of RNG supplied, ensuring the data center can meet its standards for emissions reduction. Procurement of the RNG is scheduled to begin in early 2026. 

The RNG market is rapidly growing along with burgeoning interest in all forms of clean energy. Timing-based incentives for the market, such as those included in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, put a premium on designs that are adaptable, reliable, affordable, and constructible.

Because RNG remains an emerging market, many owners and operators of RNG facilities are designing and developing them for the first time. Reliability is critical for RNG facilities — including biogas generation, upgrading, and processing, as well as pipeline interconnects — because any downtime will require flaring of biogas, leading to additional emissions and loss of potential revenue. Keeping total installation costs low is also vital to justifying the business case for building a facility.

Read more about how to leverage a standardized design approach in RNG facility projects here.

A pair of community microgrid projects in Massachusetts are already helping to inspire similar projects in the state before construction has even begun.

The city of Chelsea and Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood are each developing projects that supporters hope can become powerful case studies for the potential of microgrids to increase resilience and create other benefits for residents.

Chelsea has ordered equipment for a microgrid that will connect municipal facilities, and is targeting a construction date in the second half of 2024. Chinatown is finalizing plans for a system to provide solar power and backup energy storage to a 200-unit affordable housing apartment building. 

“We do see this serving as a model for the nation if we can pull it off,” said Alexander Train, Chelsea’s director of housing and community development.

The list of communities considering whether to follow their lead includes Cambridge, Lynn, and Milton.

In the broadest sense, microgrids are small-scale energy systems in which power is produced, distributed, and consumed, typically all within a self-contained area such as a college campus or hospital complex. Microgrids can often operate independently from the main grid, providing continuous power, even in case of disruptions to the regional supply, and can help cut energy costs. 

Though they come in all configurations and sizes, microgrids have historically generated power with fossil fuels. But as the transition to sustainable energy accelerates, more organizations are looking at ways to combine renewable energy and battery storage to create cleaner microgrids. 

A unique model

Several years ago, semi-retired engineer David Dayton saw in this evolving model an opportunity to improve the health and safety of environmental justice communities — areas that bear a disproportionate environmental burden and are often home to many low-income residents and people of color. 

Solar panels could cut energy costs, while batteries could provide power to critical facilities, such as municipal buildings, community centers, and senior housing, in case of power outages. Batteries could also be used to sell power back to the main grid to help pay for the system.

To get this vision off the ground, Dayton reached out to organizations he was familiar with, including the Green Justice Coalition and private companies Peregrine Energy Group and Synapse Energy Economics. The participants identified Chelsea and Chinatown as good candidates for a community microgrid. Both communities have high populations of immigrants and people of color, and both have median household incomes well below the average for the area. And they are vulnerable to climate change impacts including flooding and dangerous temperatures as the result of the urban heat island effect. 

In 2018, the group Dayton assembled acquired grants from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center for feasibility studies in the two communities.

The model developed during this process proposes to create the nation’s first community-owned “virtual microgrid.” The designs use cloud-based software to connect solar installations and batteries in locations that aren’t necessarily adjacent to each other, a departure from the conventional model in which the components of the microgrid are physically connected. This approach allows more flexibility in deciding what facilities can participate, particularly helpful when a community would like to include vital facilities that are geographically spread out. 

“It’s a microgrid without borders,” Dayton said. “We can add any building to the network at any time — they don’t have to be contiguous.”

Today, the first two projects are making progress. In Chelsea, a design has been created that includes 500 kilowatt-hour batteries at both the police station and city hall, as well as a 400 kilowatt solar array at the department of public works facility. Plans are already in the works to start gathering more community input by the end of the year about expanding the system to other essential locations such as senior housing, churches, or health care centers. 

“We want this system to proliferate as fast as we possibly can,” Train said.

In Chinatown, project developers have had to scale back their initial ambitions of connecting several multifamily housing buildings. They are now focused on serving Masspike Towers, a privately owned development of 190 affordable units, before expanding. The plan, still being finalized, is to build a solar installation and share the savings across all residents in a model similar to community solar. Battery storage will help keep common areas powered and extensive energy efficiency measures will reduce overall consumption. 

“Our goal is to bring the benefits of clean energy and decarbonization incentives to a low-income urban community that has historically missed out on a lot of those benefits,” said Lydia Lowe, executive director of the Chinatown Community Land Trust, one of the community partners in the project

Learning lessons

As work has progressed in Chelsea and Chinatown, other communities have started to wonder about the possibilities. And the two ongoing projects are offering valuable lessons about how to make community microgrids work. 

Financing has emerged as a potential major sticking point. In Chelsea, where the city will own the system, the city council voted to provide $4 million in funding to the project. That money – along with federal support, the savings created by solar generation, and the revenue from selling stored powerback onto the grid – is enough to get the project up and running. Building on municipal sites that each have only one tenant also helps simplify the design and logistics. 

In Chinatown, however, the city is providing some funding, but not enough to cover the entire project, making it more challenging to structure the financing in a way that is affordable yet satisfies potential investors. 

“It is a little bit tougher. We were able to get the city on board in Chelsea,” said Sari Kayyali, microgrid manager for the two projects. “We’ve been working with them to find a workable scope that can pay back investors in a timely manner.”

The work thus far has also highlighted the importance of the community-led ethos that distinguishes the approach from other microgrids, which are generally privately owned and operated. From the beginning, Dayton and other planners felt it was essential to the underlying mission of environmental justice that community members have a lot of say in determining the goals, design, and operations of these community microgrids. In both Chelsea and Chinatown, the planners divided the $75,000 each community received, dedicating half to engineering and technical planning, and giving the other half to community organizations to conduct outreach and education. 

In Chelsea, these efforts were key to securing the microrid’s future: The strong support of the community helped sway a few skeptical city councilors to vote for funding for the project, said Elena González, technical director of Climable, a nonprofit that has conducted community engagement and outreach for Chelsea, Chinatown, and Cambridge.

But the importance of community involvement is far more than just strategic, supporters said. 

“These microgrid projects empower communities and give them a role in the way that energy development happens,” González said. “This is something that has a huge impact in people’s lives and it is important that the community leads.”

This article first appeared on Energy News Network and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

In 2020, the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) awarded nearly $4 million to a team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop an optimized solution to manage the distribution of electricity within a network of solar-powered microgrids. The team developed a microgrid orchestrator— software designed to manage the exchange of power between multiple microgrids within a network. The team is in the final stages of hardware testing before demonstrating the microgrid orchestrator in the mountain town of Adjuntas, Puerto Rico.

Two community-owned microgrids will soon provide solar power to Adjuntas, even when blackouts occur in other parts of the island. Adjuntas did not have power for six months because of Hurricane Maria in 2017. Local community organization Casa Pueblo partnered with the nonprofit Honnold Foundation to install the town square microgrids to ensure that Adjuntas residents have access to critical services in the aftermath of future natural disasters.

When Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico in September 2022, a smaller, previously-installed Adjuntas microgrid that serves Casa Pueblo kept the power on for nine days when other parts of the island went dark. Researchers will work to advance the orchestrator’s capabilities to extend electric service as long as possible for future outages.

The DOE says the success of this microgrid orchestrator could result in the creation of microgrid networks in communities across the nation to increase resilience, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and support energy independence and security.

The DOE also recently announced a $14.7 million Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for multi-year research, development, and demonstration of microgrid-related technologies, with the goal to bring microgrid solutions to underserved and Indigenous communities in remote, rural, and islanded regions in the United States.

With this FOA, DOE’s Office of Electricity’s research partners will develop and demonstrate microgrid-enabling technologies, including renewable generation and storage systems, multi-nodal small-scale high-voltage direct current, advanced demand-side management strategies, and microgrid control systems. The FOA also includes opportunities to address non-technical barriers to deployment of microgrids in these communities, such as lack of local technical expertise and supply chain challenges.

Originally published in Power Grid International.

This week, the project received some additional assistance.

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced that Valley Children’s, the California Energy Commission (CEC) and Faraday Microgrids are the recipients of a long-duration energy storage demonstrations grant to accelerate and expand the healthcare network’s clean energy storage capabilities. This microgrid at Valley Children’s is one of just 15 projects chosen as part of the DOE’s $325 million commitment to fund similar projects nationwide that promote the adoption of renewable energy resources and advance clean air technologies. Valley Children’s microgrid will consist of solar photovoltaic materials, fuel cells, and battery storage.

“At the heart of Valley Children’s sustainability plan is our kids. Valley Children’s must ensure we always have a source of energy to care for them and their families under any circumstance or through any disruption – and we have a responsibility to improve the communities where our children live, learn and play,” says Valley Children’s President and CEO Todd Suntrapak. “The Department of Energy grant represents a transformative moment for Valley Children’s and for our communities, and places us at the forefront of creating safe, effective and reliable power systems for hospitals here and around the world.”

Valley Children’s project, to be engineered by Mazzetti and built by renewable microgrid developer, Faraday Microgrids, is expected to receive $30 million from the DOE and an additional $25 million from the CEC. At the project’s completion, Valley Children’s is projected to operate the largest renewable energy microgrid in the country, connected to a hospital emergency system.

Over the next several months, the DOE, CEC, Faraday Microgrids and Valley Children’s will finalize the terms of the grant.

Meanwhile, work continues on phase 1 of Valley Children’s renewable energy microgrid. When online and operational in 2025, the renewable energy microgrid will reduce reliance on the traditional power grid, ensuring Valley Children’s Hospital and buildings on its campus remain operational in the event of power outages in the region. It will also cut carbon emissions by more than 50%.

Valley Children’s, one of the first hospitals to sign the White House-HHS Health Sector Climate Pledge, has also committed to achieving net zero by the year 2050, meaning the entire campus will produce no carbon emissions.