At Microgrid 2018, Edward Yim, associate director at the DC Department of Energy and Environment, shared how scalable resilience and a focus on climate strategies can pave the way for a more reliable energy future.
While towns and cities show increasing interest in community microgrids little easily accessible guidance exists for municipal leaders who are exploring the concept. To help these communities get started, Microgrid Knowledge has produced this special report.
In recent years, new technologies have also come to market. These new technologies allow modern “smart” microgrids to provide benefits exceeding those of their predecessors, and are spurring renewed interest in microgrid development. As renewable energy becomes more reliable and the capacity of new battery-based stored energy systems increases, microgrids are now viewed as a viable way to meet demand when production of intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar energy is low.
Microgrids have been around for decades; in fact, configurations that look much like microgrids go back to Thomas Edison’s time. But for most of their history, microgrids operated as a niche technology, workable and financially feasible mostly on college campuses or in remote locations. Now, the technology has radically ‘changed its stars,’ so to speak. Microgrids are poised to become an integral part of North America’s energy transformation.
Emerging technologies are making it possible to deploy advanced microgrids capable of integrating multiple DERs into a single system that can operate both independently from (i.e., in “islanded” mode) and seamlessly with the extant electric grid.
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