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Microgrids Gain Momentum

Feb. 15, 2017
Heightened recognition of electrical grid vulnerability is advancing interest in distributed energy, further aligning building management systems and smart controls with the microgrid concept.

Necessity is the mother of invention, to be sure. It also gives birth to urgency, of course, spawning action where there’s been complacency and delay. A textbook case of this notion may be the latest round of developments in the world of microgrids — small, highly controllable collections of electric loads and generation resources that can operate independently of the grid in island mode, or interconnectedly with the grid, as needs dictate.

Distributed energy resources in the form of connected microgrids are the future of electric power distribution. Advances in smart building technologies are on track to aid in the rollout of this increasingly decentralized power delivery infrastructure (cofotoisme/iStock/Thinkstock).

While microgrids have been around in some form for decades, the buzz around them and the concept of distributed energy writ large has waxed and waned. But it’s spiked of late — for various reasons. From the rise of controls-laden smart buildings and the maturation of renewable energy to new technologies for energy storage and the drive for energy cost savings and greater control of energy usage, the case for microgrids grows stronger, and the ability to create them becomes easier.

Another notable reason is that nature and its tempests have vividly demonstrated the vulnerability of the monolithic power grids operated by electric utilities. Specifically, severe weather events affecting heavily populated areas — notably a succession of powerful storms that plunged parts of the Northeast into days of darkness and paralysis — have jump-started microgrid projects in populous regions that were in the bullseye and elsewhere. With fears growing that stronger and more frequent storms could be on the horizon, interest in microgrids and other means of reserve power is gaining more interest.

Connecticut, a state hit hard along with parts of coastal New York and New Jersey by Hurricanes Irene and Sandy in 2011 and 2012, has been an active player on the microgrid front. In the storms’ wake, the state began funding pilot microgrid development projects designed to begin taking action to prepare for future widespread power outages. To date, about a dozen projects are in various stages of development (some operational) for some small municipalities and college campuses in the state, having been seeded with some $20 million in state grant money.

Acting quickly after Hurricane Sandy, state lawmakers passed legislation to fund elements of microgrid design and engineering, awarding the first grant in 2013. The prime motivation, says Veronica Szczerkowski, a coordinator in the state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, was to begin carving out a few small islands of independence from the electrical grid. When built, they’ll be able to generate power on-site through combined heat and power (CHP) natural gas and diesel fuel generation and, increasingly, renewable energy sources paired with battery storage.

“The main focus was not saving money on electric bills or incorporating green power, but instead it was on resiliency,” she says, noting that projects have incorporated small collections of municipal buildings, parts of college campuses, and even a supermarket, gas station and senior housing community in one town — all identified as key community resources that could remain up and running should grid power falter. “These are really designed as local, community things, beacons, rather than being able to house thousands of people in the event of an outage.”

Nevertheless, these pilots in Connecticut, along with others in New York that are similarly financed by state governments, may prove meaningful in the evolution of microgrids. Willing to spend tidy sums to spark development, more states are signaling to energy users, developers, and electric utilities they regulate that distributed energy resources may have a bigger role to play in improving energy stability. That financial support on the front end, for design and engineering, can prove critical because despite their potential benefits, microgrids can be a tough sell.

A control room is the operational/monitoring hub for a microgrid built near Lancaster, Texas, for Oncor, an electric T

There has to be an economic element tied to them, explains one microgrid applications director for a leading vendor of switching, protection, and control solutions for electric power systems, who maintains they’re not just to serve as backup power. “Whether it’s to offset demand charges, provide peak load management, reduce costly carbon emissions, or potentially reduce the ultimate business costs of a power outage, they need a business case,” he says. “When we see different communities and commercial and industrial users doing it, it’s always for some reason along those lines.”

Justifications, though, look to be in growing supply. As of late 2016, Navigant Research counted 1,681 microgrid projects worldwide that were either operational, in development, or proposed. That number, heavily skewed to North America, includes 126 new ones added in the year’s last quarter. Last May, recognizing a surprise prior-year spike in deployments, GTM Research revised its forecast for growth, upping its original projection of 2.85GW of microgrid power by 2020 to 3.59GW. On other measures, in 2015, Navigant forecast $8.7 billion in microgrid vendor revenue by 2020, while GTM the same year predicted $3.5 billion in U.S. investment in them over five years.

The smart surge

Growing interest in microgrids is closely tracking the rise of another revolution of sorts — this one in building systems management.

Smart buildings, those outfitted with technology that allows powered building assets and systems to be extensively monitored and controlled, are ramping up in both new construction and ambitious building retrofits. With the aim of improving overall performance, occupant experience, and higher efficiency, smart buildings are on the leading edge of efforts to build oversight, predictability, and automation into the operation of structures that, uncontrolled, devour massive amounts of energy.

“More buildings are now being managed by data analytics, where you’re able to develop rules for how each element of a building’s systems is supposed to run and how it relates to others,” says Jim Sinopoli, owner of Smart Buildings, LLC, an engineering consultancy.

But as microgrids enter the picture, smart building technologies are poised to expand their role. Now, in a scenario where either a single facility or a grouping of them can tap on-site power generation resources in addition to those of the grid — and must maintain some level of contact and interface with the grid — smart building monitoring and control functions become central to the task of operating and maintaining a microgrid.

Indeed, without those core “smart” capabilities incorporated into its structures at some level, microgrids can’t truly function as either “islanded” or grid-tethered distributed energy resources, maintains Joe Sullivan, vice president of energy, policy and development for Concord Engineering. Sullivan, who has been involved in both smart building and microgrid projects for the Voorhees, N.J. company, sees the two as almost inseparable.

A 7MW/3MWh lithium-ion energy storage system helps the Village of Minster, Ohio better use its 4.2MW solar PV facility for municipal power generation. It now has the town thinking about creating an “island” microgrid that could tap solar and other renewable power sources off-grid (Photo courtesy of S

To be able to operate independently from the grid in the event of a power outage, he says, a microgrid with an on-site power generation resource sized below peak load requirements must be able to match accessible power with prioritized needs. With smart building systems in play, they have the ability to establish that hierarchy and implement it when on-site power has to kick in.

“There’s almost never a building that has a need for everything to be on all the time,” he says. “So during an emergency, lights can be dimmed or temperatures can be floated up or down to bring down loads. And the time to figure all of that out is not when there’s an emergency but well in advance.

“Smart building systems that can identify what does and does not need to be supported requires building engineers and building management systems (BMS) staff to spend time working with owners and users to define those terms. The ability to reduce loads automatically, to balance supply and demand, becomes a very effective tool.”

Continued advances in smart building technologies hold the promise of achieving even more granular levels of control, says Bill Moran, director, microgrid engineering at TRC Companies, Inc., Lowell, Mass. He points to the budding Internet of Things (IoT) as a vehicle for not only taking individual building level control to new heights but also enhancing the ability of multiple facilities within a microgrid to communicate. The IoT, envisioned as a web of sensor-equipped and interconnected devices that can be digitally monitored and controlled, could enhance tasks such as power analysis, continuous, real-time data gathering from powered systems, and wireless remote control and automation.

“Building management systems that can be tied into load management systems wirelessly can be programmed to take control in certain situations, take something off line temporarily, and help achieve a balance between load and generation,” he says.

The renewables link

Aside from providing a reliable reserve power source, microgrids also give users a powerful resource to meet everyday energy needs. By being able to tap into on-site generation, for instance, microgrid facilities gain the flexibility to harness less costly power during times of peak grid demand, when electricity prices can spike.

That’s especially true for microgrids that incorporate generation powered by renewable energy, potentially cheaper solar and wind power that is increasingly capable of being stored on-site via emerging battery technologies. But these renewable energy sources have practical limits; they alone can’t be relied upon to provide emergency power in a microgrid for an extended period because of their variability. Nonetheless, they’re becoming key elements in microgrids that prioritize “green” and potentially cheaper peak usage power even as they remain securely interconnected with a largely fossil-fuel powered electric utility grid.

Renewable energy’s growing presence in microgrids presents another strong case for the role that highly capable smart building technologies can play. The task of monitoring the status of volatile solar or wind energy sources and tapping into their production — directly or through battery storage as needed — demands high-level information technology resources. And they reside in both traditional BMS and, increasingly, specialized microgrid controllers that can interface with facility BMS.

Due in part to the evolution of standards for data communications protocols for microgrids, such controllers are fast emerging as a new frontier in the microgrid space, addressing improved master oversight of systems, including elements of network cybersecurity that are drawing more concern, says Sullivan.

“We’re now seeing multiple companies coming out with control solutions that work to manage all the components of a microgrid,” he says. “These controllers are designed to reside at a level above individual building control systems, making decisions about whether to stay connected to the grid or not, to pull from storage or ramp up a generator.”

Benefits for users, producers

For energy customers looking for ways to cut electricity costs, improve service reliability, and access cleaner and even higher quality power, microgrid generation resources and their linkage to the grid open a world of possibilities. Meanwhile, for grid service providers, microgrids, cobbled together, offer a range of pluses — from their ability to shave demands on the grid in times of peak usage to accessing excess microgrid power to reduce transmission- and distribution-related energy losses.

But to deliver those advantages, microgrids must rely on a systems control architecture that can be programmed for continuous monitoring, automation and split-second, logic-based decision-making. Demand response, peak shaving, load shedding, and other dynamic functions are highly attainable with microgrids, but only if master microgrid control and building level smart systems are fully engaged.

Incorporating microgrids into the electricity distribution system could become an information management and data communications challenge, as much as an energy production and distribution one. The coming world of microgrids and other distributed energy resources will be a different one, says Moran.

“Instead of just a very few large electric utilities interacting across the transmission system we’re going to have a multitude of different producers interacting with each other,” he says. “There are a lot of technical changes that will be need to absorbed.”

A recent special issue of the scientific journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) — The Proceedings of the IEEE — presented scientific papers that probe details of evolving demands on building control systems as microgrids are developed and building energy efficiency becomes paramount.

Authors of the issue summary explain that “novel information and communication concepts will be needed to ensure secure and reliable power delivery” as power grids become more decentralized. The papers, they explain, address the emerging consensus that “energy distribution through facility microgrids can be optimized for efficiency, occupant comfort, and the building’s ability to participate in demand response power markets” using intelligently deployed smart and automated building technologies.

Although smart buildings and microgrids are not always mentioned in the same breath, it seems certain that an eventual merger of the concepts is inevitable as technologies and demands advance. There’s no getting around the fact that control systems and technologies are central to microgrid operation, says Peter Douglass, a director of the Microgrid Institute, an organization that helps brings parties and resources together on microgrid projects.

“The behind-the-meter conversation is becoming more topical, so smart buildings will grow to become more important,” he says.               

Zind is a freelance writer based in Lees Summit, Mo. He can be reached at [email protected].

SIDEBAR: Connecticut Projects Incorporate Sophisticated Controls

While smart buildings, strictly defined, may well help hasten the future development and refinement of microgrids, they aren’t an essential component of many currently being deployed.

Projects being developed in Connecticut under the state’s microgrid grant funding initiative, for example, don’t appear to incorporate the addition of sophisticated building management or automation systems that may characterize smart buildings. They do, however, integrate sophisticated master microgrid control systems that are key to managing the generation and distribution of power under various conditions.

A project in Fairfield, Conn., operational since June 2015, uses a control and energy distribution system provided by a global automation and energy management company. It installed a system that allows real-time monitoring of energy consumption via a dashboard.

Using the display feature, operators are able to manage microgrid resources that include a 300kW natural gas generator, 60kW of combined heat and power, and a 47kW solar photovoltaic system. Managing a microgrid that can be operated in both island and grid-interconnection mode, the system monitors the availability and cost of both grid and distributed energy resources, helping ensure that energy loads are
serviced optimally at the best overall value.

Designed like others funded under the Connecticut grant program as a system to provide resiliency in the event of a power outage, the Fairfield microgrid supplies power to selected police and fire department facilities, an emergency communications center and cell phone tower, and a public shelter. Microgrid power is supplemented with rooftop solar PV panels on both the shelter and the fire station facility. However, since the solar system has no battery storage component, it is offline in the event of a grid outage, which requires the microgrid to operate in island mode.

In the next round of funding under the state program, however, grant applicants will be incentivized to incorporate renewable energy with a storage component, says Veronica Szczerkowski, a coordinator in the state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. While that will encourage applicants to begin prioritizing the environmentally friendly aspects of microgrids, in addition to resiliency, it will also serve to complicate the operational aspects of microgrids. In turn, that will almost surely elevate the premium on properly designed and tailored control and management systems. And at some point, smart building technology could become indispensable.

“These are complicated projects that are not plug-and-play, and our criteria and requirements have gotten much more detailed as time has gone on,” she says. “All of these systems are designed individually; there’s nothing that’s off the shelf.”   

About the Author

Tom Zind | Freelance Writer

Zind is a freelance writer based in Lee’s Summit, Mo. He can be reached at [email protected].

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