Canopy Power, a start-up headquartered in Singapore which has recently completed microgrid projects including solar and battery energy storage, for luxury resorts in South East Asia, says it wants to take the tech and its concepts into a number of other sectors.

The company first got in touch with Energy-Storage.news in September, on the completion of a “customised independent renewable energy microgrid” for Telunas Private Island, an idyllic island paradise resort located in the Riau Archipelago of Indonesia.

That project included 110kW peak of solar PV from REC Solar, solar inverters from SMA, and an AlphaESS 144kWh lithium-ion energy storage system (ESS). Canopy claims the “renewable impact” of the island now stands at 60% penetration. That project still uses diesel gensets as backup power and as a part of the integrated microgrid, but is expected to reduce diesel consumption by about 45,000 litres per year.

Then, in October, the company touted the successful completion of another solar-diesel-storage microgrid, this time powering two further luxury islands resorts, Nikoi and Cempedak, again both situated on the Indonesian Riau Archipelago. These two resorts will now run on 50% renewable energy as a consequence.

In that instance, Nikoi already had some solar PV installed, while Cempedak was until recently 100% diesel-run. The islands are more than 10km from the nearest available grid connection. New solar panels were fitted (again from REC Solar, 52.5kW peak), inverters were again supplied by SMA, and the system uses a 77kWh lithium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS) supplied by Tesvolt.

From logistical challenges to channels of opportunity
Getting the projects done was rewarding, but not without challenges, Canopy Power founder Sujay Malve told Energy-Storage.news this week.

“Logistics to these remote sites is always a challenge. Customs procedures in Indonesia are more complex than several countries in the region,” Sujay Malve said.

In a recent Utility Dive opinion piece, Scott Aaronson, vice president of security and preparedness at the Edison Electric Institute, minimizes the role of microgrids in providing our communities energy resilience. He defends the actions of California’s utilities in shutting off power for millions of customers to mitigate the risk of devastating wildfires, which are often caused by the utilities’ infrastructure.

But many Californians — including Governor Gavin Newsom, who called the situation “unacceptable” — are questioning whether broad grid area shutoffs are the best way to deal with increasing wildfire risks.

The role of Community Microgrids
No silver bullet exists, and most analysts agree that a multi-pronged solution is needed. However, microgrids can and must be a key component of this solution — in particular, Community Microgrids, a new approach for designing and operating the electric grid. Community Microgrids are stacked with local renewables and staged for resilience, providing communities economic, environmental and resilience benefits.

Like traditional microgrids, Community Microgrids can island from the larger grid and operate independently. Unlike traditional microgrids, which serve a single customer, Community Microgrids serve an entire community by ensuring indefinite renewables-driven backup power for critical community facilities such as fire stations, water and communications infrastructure, hospitals and emergency shelters.

Community Microgrids can keep critical loads online indefinitely during power outages of any length. Depending on the sizing of the battery storage and the amount of sunshine, they can keep even more of the electric load online for certain periods. The levels of Community Microgrid resilience in the chart below are achieved via a net zero level of solar to a community in California with energy storage capacity equating to two hours of the nameplate solar capacity (i.e., 2 kWh of energy storage for every 1 kW of solar). Importantly, at least 10% of the load is maintained indefinitely, without interruption, while the entire load can be maintained at least 25% of the time:

Bankrupt California utility Pacific Gas & Electric has come under fire on many fronts for the scope and execution of its self-imposed blackouts last month. The blackouts will continue as the company pursues a decade-long grid-hardening project.

Electric utilities bear the solemn mission of keeping the lights on, but PG&E’s intentional shutoffs leave customers to fend for themselves. That divergence from standard operating procedure poses a question for the embattled utility: How will it take care of its millions of customers who lose access to power when the risk of starting a wildfire gets too high?

The October fires and shutoffs inspired a flurry of commentary on how microgrids and distributed energy could save the day by localizing power production and allowing communities to operate independently of the fire-threatened grid. Though sensible in theory, microgrids must navigate a thicket of regulatory and logistical barriers before they can serve as an effective tool during California blackouts.

Greentech Media dug into what action, if any, PG&E has taken to build local grid resilience that softens the blow of its power shutoff strategy. Not much has happened yet, but the utility is doing more than the casual observer might realize.

PG&E does not operate any community-scale microgrids, though it is working on one in Humboldt County. But it recently built two “resilience zones” that provide temporary backup power in fire-prone Napa County towns, and it plans to scale this concept to 40 other communities.

Microgrids remain stuck between possibility and execution. The technologies that power them are mature and already at work in numerous privately located projects, but few utilities have actually built community-based grid controls. Other utilities have taken that initiative, however, and their early efforts could serve as models for PG&E as it grapples with the new era of regular shutoffs.

On December 17, 2017, a fire at an underground electrical facility damaged two substations that serve Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport — then and now the world’s busiest airport. The resulting 11-hour-long power outage led to the cancellation of nearly 1,200 flights.

The Atlanta outage, and another that disrupted power for several hours at Los Angeles International Airport in June of this year, is motivating airport operators across the United States to take steps to ensure an uninterruptible supply of power.

In this quest for more reliable power, an increasing number of airports are turning to microgrids — self-contained grids capable of operating independently from the traditional grid. In the latest such project, Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) will become the first major American airport to be 100 percent powered by a microgrid.

In an interview, Tom Woodrow, VP of engineering, Allegheny County Airport Authority, said being able to maintain operations and always be open for business was top of mind for Pittsburgh’s airport.

“The primary goal was to avoid being the next Atlanta or LA and to be able to get that resilience and reliability. And, secondarily, to reduce the cost of electricity to the airport authority and our tenants,” he said.

The microgrid will include 22.5 megawatts of generating capacity, with 20 megawatts coming from natural gas-fired generators and 2.5 megawatts from a ground-mounted solar photovoltaic installation.

Construction of the microgrid is scheduled to take 19 months, with the system expected to be online and fully commissioned in June 2021.

Numerous airports embracing microgrids
Pittsburgh International Airport’s microgrid continues a trend that has gained momentum since Atlanta’s 2017 outage, said Isaac Maze-Rothstein, a microgrid analyst with Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables.

Atlanta’s outage has led to a “shift in thinking for airport operators,” Maze-Rothstein said.

Asia Pacific is expected to continue to be the largest overall market for microgrids, with remote segments making up the majority opportunity.

This is according to a newly released report from Navigant Research, which analyzes regional microgrid capacity, implementation spending, and business model type, providing global forecasts, segmented by region and market type, through 2028.

North America remains the top market for grid-tied microgrids, as a flurry of projects identified in 2019 increased starting point capacity levels in 2019 beyond those previously forecast.

Meanwhile, Latin America is the fastest growing market due in part to the major island-wide microgrid program in Puerto Rico.

The report also found that although microgrid technologies have dropped in cost, and controls functionality has improved, regulatory barriers and long project development cycles continue to frustrate efforts to move this market fully into the mainstream.

However, significant progress has been made in the last decade and is expected to continue.

“The total global market for microgrids in 2019 is estimated at $8.1bn and expected to near $40bn by 2028,” says Peter Asmus, research director with Navigant Research. “While different market segments have shifted in prominence over the years, what has remained consistent is overall growth across all five major regions profiled.”

The report, Microgrids Overview, forecasts regional capacity, implementation spending, and business model type by six primary market segments. The study also provides an analysis of market drivers, barriers, and technology issues. Global market forecasts, segmented by region and market type, extend through 2028.

An airport microgrid is moving forward on the far northern coast of California that could provide relief for planned utility power shutoffs and be a template for other, similar projects.

The Redwood Coast Airport Microgrid began about two years ago when Humboldt County’s Board of Supervisors gave the green light for the project to seek up to $5 million in funding from the California Energy Commission.

The project originated at the Schatz Energy Research Center (SERC), an affiliate of Humboldt State University’s Environmental Resources Engineering program. Other partners on the project include the county’s Public Works Aviation Division, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and the Redwood Coast Energy Authority (RCEA), which is a community choice aggregation.

SERC also took the lead in designing and implementing the microgrid at Blue Lake Rancheria, a Native American reservation in Humboldt County. The Redwood Coast Airport project was conceived as SERC was finishing up the microgrid for the casino and hotel at Blue Lake Rancheria, said Jim Zoellick, managing research engineer at SERC.

“We were wondering what to do next,” Zoellick said. “We had received funding through the California Energy Commission’s Electric Program Investment Charge, and knew there was another round of microgrids coming.”
EPIC, a $130 million a year ratepayer funded research project, has so far provided $84.5 million for 20 microgrid projects at 30 sites.

Isolated by mudslides and wildfires
Mudslides and wildfires sometimes close access to the two main highways to the region, and the Redwood Coast Airport becomes the only means of contact with the rest of the world. Not only does the region face isolating natural disasters, but it is also electrically remote. There are some local generating plants, but otherwise the area, which has a peak load of about 170 MW, is served by a single, 70 MW high voltage transmission line.