Microgrids should be a strong component of resilient, smart cities

Co-author: Dave O’Connor

The US Power Grid was born in 1882 with the Pearl Street Station in lower Manhattan and expanded and evolved over the next 134 years.  Many parts of the grid are now aging and it is estimated by the International Energy Agency that $2.1 trillion will need to be invested over the next 30 years in order to modernize the grid.  Modernization will encompass more than replacing old components with new. It will need to address integration of larger shares of renewable energy while delivering on higher levels of reliability and resiliency that are demanded by energy consumers and businesses.

The industry now has new tools at its disposal, such as intelligent energy storage, smart grid, consumer demand response management (DRM), Internet of Things (IoT) technology, and microgrids. 

Microgrids are a promising solution – the global microgrid market is estimated to top $35 billion by 2020. A new generation of low-carbon microgrids is emerging and shifting our conception of how energy and power is produced, distributed and consumed. The concept of locally generated and consumed energy is evolving how we think about and plan for utility systems in densely populated cities, where resilience is increasingly valued in the face of powerful storms and other events that can bring down the power grid.  

There’s a special challenge there, as many cities and municipalities are starting to make commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while providing reliable utilities and resilient essential services during emergencies or natural disasters.  City and urban residents and businesses stand to benefit by incorporating distributed low-carbon microgrid projects in smart city initiatives, and even more significantly, embedding them at the core of holistic strategic infrastructure and urban revitalization plans. 

The idea of deploying local, renewable energy-driven microgrids across cities and metropolitan areas is gaining momentum across the U.S. A total of 124 microgrids with combined capacity of 1,169 MW were up and running across the nation as of July 2015, according to Pew Research, also predicting that microgrid capacity will grow to exceed 2,850 MW by 2020, an increase of almost 145%. Market revenue is expected to soar as well, rising nearly 270% to total over $3.5 billion.

The recent surge is due, in part, to the particular risks that cities face. Recent extreme weather events have resulted in extended grid outages across the Northeast. These high profile events have served as catalysts for the federal, state and local governments across the country to take action. Microgrids have emerged as a powerful tool in building a more resilient and sustainable power grid.   

After enduring Superstorm Sandy, New York was the first to launch a clean energy program aimed specifically at spurring distribution of low-carbon community microgrids state-wide. The $40 million NY Prize challenge is one of the latest in a series of green energy-climate change resilience initiatives launched by Governor Andrew Cuomo. In the first of the three-stage program, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) awarded $100,000 NY Prize grants to fund community microgrid feasibility studies in 83 cities and municipalities. 

More than 130 project proposals were submitted to NYSERDA's NY Prize proposal solicitation. That prompted the agency to raise the number of grant awards from 25 to 83. Nine urban microgrid projects in New York City alone were awarded grants, underscoring the important role microgrids can play in massive urban centers.

At this early stage of evolution, the microgrid market is fragmented. As Navigant Research highlights in a recent report, projects and business models tend toward being “one-off” custom-designed installations. However, those one-off projects are already showcasing the technologies that we think will be the standard for the industry, and the New York Prize program also revealed the special challenges in designing microgrids for urban centers. 

As in New York and our own pilot project in the Kansas City area, resilient and low-carbon systems require multiple technologies to deliver on requirements. For example, a system based only on solar and wind generation would be low carbon, but would not deliver resilient or reliable service because these are both intermittent resources dependent upon the sun and wind. To be resilient, dispatchable resources like energy storage and fossil fueled generation sources are required as part of the system. Seamless integration of multiple generation sources and loads is then at the heart of what makes a system a microgrid.  

A platform for remotely operating and maintaining multiple distributed generation resources and microgrids is also critical because many of these resources are designed to be “operator-free.” Modern data analytics platforms can take holistic and granular views of energy flows, operating data in real-time through advanced predictive algorithms and equipment condition monitoring. These platforms can identify wasted energy, enhance efficiency, and enhance resiliency through coordination of generation and demand of smart devices deployed on the system —all while constantly monitoring and evaluating market costs and environmental performance. Modern analytics and control allow microgrid owners to focus on achieving the benefits that are most important to them, be it cost, greenhouse gas reduction, resilience, or other attributes, without sacrificing on other important qualities.

Part of the big challenge in city energy demands is ensuring resilience, and this is a particularly promising highlight of microgrid. This grid-tied campus microgrid serves several valuable purposes, as it reduces overall and peak power demand and associated expenses, and prolongs the life of physical equipment and devices. More broadly, we’ve seen that it enhances energy efficiency, security, reliability and resilience while at the same time reducing our emissions and carbon footprint, as well as providing essential ancillary grid services, such as frequency regulation and voltage control.

In order to gain practical knowledge and greater understanding about their overall performance and potential value, we built a hybrid low-carbon microgrid that powers a significant section of our world headquarters near Kansas City. 

This system is composed of 50kW of solar photovoltaic generation, two 65kW natural gas fired microturbines with the ability to capture and use waste heat (combined heat and power), a 100kW/100kWh lithium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS), EV charging stations and a geothermal well field that helps maintain comfortable temperatures year-round. The system is also integrated with the building management system to enable transitions from grid-connected to island operation by matching generation with building load. The benefits accrue and extend beyond Black & Veatch to include our local utility and community, as well as the wide variety of organizations we work with. For instance, we worked closely with another local Kansas City company, Custom Controls, to design and engineer the microgrid's supervisory control system. 

Realizing this vision can enable energy companies, city and municipal leaders to meet the pressing, interrelated challenges of modernizing our aging power grid infrastructure, as well as the pressures of ongoing urbanization and the escalating threats and costs of a rapidly warming climate. These are goals well worth the investment. 

Jason Abiecunas is a Micgrogrid Technology Manager for Black & Veatch, and Dave O’Connor is a Grid Edge Solution Lead for Black & Veatch.