The only thing more important to America’s electric companies than protecting the nation’s energy grid is ensuring the safety of our customers and our communities.

National Weather Service modeling in Northern California recently showed high-risk areas, or “red flag warnings,” where wind patterns were alarmingly similar to the deadly October 2017 events that resulted in more than 20 fires in Pacific Gas and Electric’s (PG&E) service territory. That led to the company’s recent decision to use a public safety power shutoff, which, while extraordinary, protected property and saved lives.

With more people living in high-risk areas, we must confront the growing threat of fires and their impacts on people, property, and infrastructure. One suggestion has been to do away with the interconnected energy grid and rely instead on microgrids. As the thinking goes, this would address fire risk by eliminating infrastructure that can be compromised by high winds or other hazards.

To paraphrase H.L. Mencken: For every complex problem, there’s a solution that is simple, neat and wrong.

That is not to say that microgrids cannot play a valuable role in supporting a safe, reliable, affordable, clean and secure energy grid. Across the United States, microgrids have been built or are being considered to help solve localized challenges or to provide power for customers that need to exceed 99.9% reliability.

But microgrids are expensive to build, and the ones being built today still are connected to the energy grid because the grid’s interconnectedness allows electric companies to leverage a broad set of tools, characteristics and capabilities that enhance resilience in ways that a self-contained microgrid cannot.

This includes the grid’s ability to integrate diverse resources, including more and more renewables. There also is benefit from enhanced situational awareness, using the ubiquitous infrastructure to sense anomalies and facilitate response. And, the energy grid provides redundancy, limiting single points of failure and withstanding extraordinary conditions, but also recovering quickly when Mother Nature or malicious actors impact operations.

Having the capability to island off sections of the energy grid during emergency situations is one tool in the toolbox for electric companies. There also are technologies that enable energy grid operators to shut off more targeted segments of the system strategically, or to reroute power and still deliver electricity to communities, while safely de-energizing lines where necessary.

Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) announced this week that it is establishing a microgrid to supply power at the airport, connected to the main electrical power grid in case of emergency but otherwise separate from it.

As microgrids are becoming increasingly popular in the United States due to their efficiencies and the ability to generate power even when the main grid is unavailable, this is not tremendously newsworthy per se. However, what is newsworthy is that most of the power for the microgrid will be supplied by the 14 producing Marcellus Shale natural gas wells at the airport, all of which will provide gas to five natural-gas fired generators. In addition, PIT will build an array of 7,800 solar panels. To construct and operate the grid, PIT entered into a 20-year agreement with utility Peoples Natural Gas, which will connect the gas wells, get the solar panels installed, and make a $30 million investment. PIT claims it will not pay out of pocket at all for the microgrid.

This microgrid concept is being touted as an example of modern sustainability, and also as an example of how solar power can play a much larger role in providing our energy needs. All of this being true, at its core the microgrid still rests on the back of the Marcellus Shale gas wells located within the airport proper. As with other airports, such as Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), PIT generates large revenue streams from the leasing of its land for subterranean shale gas drilling. However, this would be the first time that a large hub airport sets up its own microgrid to power itself, increasing its energy security in case of power problems like brownouts, storm damage, or other occasional problems with the grid. Along with DFW, which also leased its acreage for oil and gas drilling, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) sits adjacent to the Inglewood Oil Field, the largest urban oil field in the country. Both would seem to be candidates to explore such a self-contained microgrid.

Development of a power microgrid, however, raises the basic question: Is this microgrid concept something to exalt or condemn? It dramatically increases the presence of renewable solar energy for airport operations, but its core remains fossil fuels. The fact that PIT’s agreement is for 20 years means that the Allegheny County Airport Authority, which operates PIT, does not believe that it can convert to operate the airport using only renewable energy within the estimated 10 to 12 year time frame in which climate experts tell us we must transition away completely from fossil fuels. Is this then a major positive step on the road to a more renewable future or an inappropriate locking in of destructive fossil fuel technology and dependence that does not divest quickly enough from fossil fuels?

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) may speed development of 40 microgrids to help customers maintain electricity when wildfire threats force it to deenergize portions of its grid.

The utility described its plans Friday in a four-hour emergency meeting called by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in response to the October 9-12 shutoffs to 2 million customers (738,000 accounts).

“There is a definite need to move toward some form of microgrid sectionalization,” PG&E CEO William Johnson told the commission.

On windy days California utilities have been undertaking public safety power shutoffs (PSPS) — intentional electricity shutoffs — because several wildfires in the state have been linked to their equipment.

Customers have expressed anger in the press and at the commission meeting over the shutoff. San Jose is considering exiting from PG&E’s service to run its own utility that would focus on microgrids.

We know we have to do better
During Friday’s hearing, Sumeet Singh, vice president of PG&E’s Community Wildfire Safety Program, described plans to accelerate development of what the utility calls “resilience zones,” areas of the grid configured to act as microgrids with temporary, mobile generation. Eventually the utility may develop them into permanent microgrids, according to PG&E’s 2018 wildfire mitigation plan.

One zone is already operating in Angwin, a town in Napa County. The project taps into cogeneration at Pacific Union College and provides power for a fire station, gas station, apartment building and a plaza.

More than 1 million Californians were without electricity during the largest public safety power shutoffs in state history. The shutoffs were implemented during the second week of October by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) over its vast service territory, one of the largest in the United States. Already facing bankruptcy as a result of claims from major wildfires that occurred over the past two years, the utility was being proactive in moving forward with an aggressive approach to public safety.

Weather forecasts showed good probability of major wind storms. These forecasts, coupled with the dry landscape of California at this time of year (due to lack of summer rains), meant the move to implement shutoffs could be viewed as prudent. Nevertheless, the shutoffs exposed the lack of grid resilience in a state that prides itself in cutting-edge technologies and digital innovation. Although Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed more than 20 bills to address the wildfire threat, the insolvency of PG&E and related issues, California remains at risk for future shutoffs and wildfires.

Solutions are multifaceted. Although the shutoffs led to quick sales of backup fossil generators for many households and retail businesses, this trend is troubling. Increasing reliance on such small-scale power and largely unregulated sources could jeopardize California’s aggressive clean energy and carbon reduction mandates, recently increased to 100 percent clean energy by 2045. If such shutoffs occur with increasing frequency, California’s legacy as a leader in deploying cutting-edge sustainable energy solutions also may be questioned.

Microgrids as a potential solution
In addition to digital grid automation investments and shutoff policies, perhaps a better solution is microgrids. Utilities such as PG&E are moving forward in partnership with community choice aggregation programs to develop such resiliency-based systems in Humboldt County, supporting a local airport. Clearly, the state needs a more comprehensive strategy to deploy microgrids more broadly, with greater regulatory clarity on the role for utilities, the private sector and local governments. Of particular concern are critical facilities, including first responders to wildfires and other vital infrastructure services, such as clean drinking water.

A recent analysis (PDF) performed by Navigant, a Guidehouse company, for the California Energy Commission (CEC) found that a primary barrier to deployment of microgrids is interconnection practices with host distribution utilities.

A summer camp in Frederick, Maryland is operating a campus microgrid that leverages Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) to achieve an immediate return on investment while delivering green energy.

The net zero carbon microgrid serves Bar-T Mountainside Summer Camp, a 115-acre campus that offers after-school childcare, summer day camps, outdoor education and corporate team building and events.

The microgrid project stands out as the first commercial and industrial facility in Frederick County to employ PACE, a program that allows property owners to finance the up-front cost of energy projects and pay the costs back over time with their property taxes.

“It was designed to be cash-flow positive on day one — savings are greater than the PACE debt service. Thus, the system delivers 100% green power, resiliency and ‘savings as-a-service’,” said Brent Hollenbeck, founder and CTO of TimberRock Advanced Energy, which leads the project.

The system is designed to produce energy savings, energy resilience and new opportunities to generate revenues via market arbitrage.

Campus microgrid delivers 100% green energy

Bar-T’s microgrid has roughly 100 kW of PV across the facility’s various roof tops. Three separate distributed battery systems collectively provide about 35 kWh of energy storage capacity, according to TimberRock.

All of the PV arrays are islandable and capable of operating independently during grid outages.

California is the poster child for microgrids, usually in a good way, this week in a bad way.

The power outages to 738,000 electric customers illustrated that even California, one of the lead states deploying microgrids, is not building them quickly enough. Microgrids act as local islands of power when the central grid fails, or in this case when power is intentionally shut down as a safety precaution.

Some Californians had access to microgrids when the outage struck; most did not.

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) began shutting off power Wednesday under threat of high winds. The utility was concerned that downed power lines would spark fires that would quickly spread in windy conditions. In bankruptcy over earlier wildfires that resulted in loss of life, the utility was taking no chances.

Press reports described chaos as a big swath of the world’s fifth largest economy this week found itself without an essential resource.

The chaos of power outages

Car accidents increased as drivers tried to navigate without traffic lights. Stores lost perishable inventory. Those who require medical devices for their health counted the hours before they could no longer manage without them. Schools closed. Workers were sidelined without the Internet.

People were angry. The governor was angry. Economists warned that the cost to the California economy could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, or even “a cool billion.”

The Los Angeles Times described the power outage as “humiliating.”

Connectedness. Community. Security.

From a human point of view, those are things most humans want. This is no different when it comes to our energy desires.

Microgrids are defined as a localized, interconnected group of electricity sources, whether linked to the greater grid or in separated mode. No man is an island, it’s been said, but some grids are.

Microgrids are all the rage in this era when consumers want to feel closer to renewable energy resources, or protected should a major storm come in and destroy much of the overlying energy infrastructure (hello, Sandy, Harvey, Irma, anyone?). Microgrids are a major development, with Navigant Research forecasting that this market could become a $31 billion industry by 2027.

And POWERGEN International is becoming the industry authority on microgrid content, with no less than 11 sessions offered when the conference comes to New Orleans from November 19-21. These microgrid events will be upstairs and downstairs in the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, and also cover a worldwide array of islanded and non-islanded projects.

“With the growth in the availability of affordable renewable energy and other distributed energy resources, energy consumers are more empowered than ever to use microgrids to generate and manage their consumption through active involvement in the market,” Mark Feasel, one of Schneider Electric’s key microgrid experts, said a few years back.

POWERGEN International’s approximately 10 hours of microgrid content spread out over three days will cover those renewable and energy storage elements, but also how traditional on-site power gen-set fit into the mix. The scheduled speakers include experts from Jacobs Engineering, POWER Engineers, Bechtel, S&C Electric, Bloom Energy, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, MTU Onsite Energy, ABB, Eaton. Decentralized Energy Knowledge Hub sponsor American Fire Technologies and utilities such as Duke Energy and Commonwealth Edison, among others.

The Department of Energy and the nation’s utilities are exploring ways to make cities more resilient in the face of mounting and costly blackouts from severe storms and heat waves that are increasing with climate change.

They will use of a variety of relatively new features appearing in urban grids, including large storage batteries, a rising number of rooftop solar installations, and new computer-controlled programs and switches. They will also ask for help from homeowners.

Some utilities are already promoting devices such as two-way controls on air conditioners, thermostats and even electric water heaters to reduce consumer power demand on super-warm days.

The most ambitious effort would give control to a local utility to make a rapid grid reconfiguration at the onset of a blackout. It will attempt to collect and distribute enough renewable energy to support an “island,” or smaller area of the grid that can quickly repower hospitals, police and fire stations, and other emergency centers.

The stage for this experiment is called the Mueller neighborhood in the east-central part of Austin, Texas, a large modern housing development started in 1999 on the runways of what was the city’s former municipal airport. Mueller has many pieces of the puzzle that might be needed, including a proliferation of new homes with rooftop solar arrays and a recently installed large battery storage system that Austin’s municipal utility, Austin Energy, helped acquire with a federal grant.

Austin’s first goal was to use the neighborhood and the big battery to help expand its reliance on renewable energy to 65% by 2027. Austin Energy has already started using the battery, installed on the edge of the Mueller neighborhood, to collect enough solar power to help it meet increased electricity demand during spates of 100 degree days.

“We’re also using it to do energy arbitrage,” said Cameron Freberg, a strategist for the utility. The battery collects and delivers solar power for use during the day, when electricity rates are high. The system recharges at night with cheap wind power from the grid, so it’s ready for the next day’s struggle to keep up with air conditioning demands.

In June, DOE offered Austin Energy part of a $5 million grant for a more complex challenge. It is to create “flexible energy pathways” from the solar arrays on the homes in Mueller, so that they might be tapped for electricity during a blackout. To do that, the local utility is joining a larger team sharing the DOE grant to explore prompt ways to minimize a storm-caused blackout.

It’s called the Solar Critical Infrastructure Energization system, or SOLACE for short. It’s not aptly named, because it’s unlikely that there will be any immediate solace for those involved in the experiment.

The physics of storms and renewable electricity present a tough nut to crack. The electricity generated by solar arrays or stored in batteries is in the form of direct current, and the electricity used on the grid is alternating current. It is a mismatch that can normally be solved by a common device called an inverter on the solar array that translates DC into AC.

According to the Advanced Energy Now 2019 Market Report, within the electricity delivery and management segment of advanced energy, it is noteworthy that advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) had two big revenue years in the United States recently, jumping 65% in 2017, to US$1.4 billion, and holding roughly steady in 2018. Smart meters and related infrastructure are foundational for much innovation in the electric power sector, including reforms like time-of-use rates. But revenue from deployments of this equipment had tapered off from the 2011 to 2012 level of nearly US$1.7 billion a year, when utility investments were driven by the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Spending on AMI reached a low of US$860 million in 2016, but in the past two years, AMI deployment has had a bit of a revival.

Even more noteworthy is the fastest growth in this segment — which totaled US$135 billion worldwide and US$21.3 billion in the United States in 2018 — over the past five years has been in energy storage. This market started at a low base, but revenue has multiplied eight-fold over the seven-year period, recording double-digit gains in 2017 and 2018 in both U.S. and world markets.

Worldwide revenue for energy storage has grown from US$462 million in 2014 to US$2.4 billion in 2018. In the United States, energy storage revenue has climbed from US$58 million to US$701 million over the past five years.

Over the past year, renewables-plus-storage projects were largely the driving force behind new announcements. One of the more interesting projects announced in 2018 was a lithium ion (Li-ion) battery being developed at India’s first-ever wind and solar hybrid project. Hero Future Energies, the owner/operator of the project, stated that the hybrid plant has seen extremely good wind production and consequently must curtail solar because of capacity constraints on the local grid. The Li-ion battery will help mitigate the need for curtailment. If all goes as planned on this pilot project, then the company will retrofit older renewable projects as well as include a storage component in all new projects.

Traditional generation replacement is also a key driver for utility-scale storage. One of the most notable tenders last year was Pacific Gas and Electric’s (PG&E) solicitation for energy storage to replace three power plants in its service territory. The gas-fired plants it is replacing had operated as reliability-must-run resources. Deploying strategically located energy storage will help lower operating costs and address congestion issues in the region.

Distributed energy storage systems continue to grow slowly throughout global markets, accounting for 23% of new capacity announced in 2018 (excluding pumped hydro). These systems are frequently paired with other generating assets (renewable or otherwise) and are chiefly used for applications like demand charge management, peak shifting, and resilience/backup power.

The unknown unknowns are what keep regional grid operators up at night. And right now the rapid growth of customer-sited microgrids, invisible to grid operators, count high among them.

That’s the message delivered last week by Jonathan Monken, PJM senior director, speaking on a plenary panel at the Virginia Clean Energy Summit in Richmond.

PJM operates one of the world’s largest grids, which through a complex orchestration of 180,000 MW, keeps electricity flowing to 65 million customers in 13 states and the District of Columbia.

But change has come to the system at a rapid clip with customers installing their own generation in the form of microgrids and other distributed energy resources (DERs). These assets are not part of the grid managed by PJM but they do influence it. For example, they can change consumption patterns — and in ways the grid operator cannot see.

“The hard part is that we don’t see down to the customer level. We don’t see below 67 kV. That is where the rub comes,” he told the audience of clean energy advocates.

Risk and reward of the new reality
Because they do not know what the distributed assets are doing, grid operators cannot incorporate them into their overall planning, which could ultimately weaken the grid, he said.

As an example, Monken described how PJM got tripped up in its forecast during the solar eclipse of 2017. It’s difficult for a grid operator to forecast how much power is likely to be used on the day of an eclipse because there is little historical precedent. PJM had assumed demand would rise because homes and businesses with solar panels would turn to grid power as the eclipse blocked the sun.

“Then something very weird happened,” Monken said. Rather than rising, demand for power fell by 4,000 to 5,000 MW.

Why? As is often the case, weather played a role. It was cooler than expected. But the unknown unknown emerged from a distributed asset. Without notifying PJM, the maker of the NEST thermostat had asked customers to conserve during the eclipse, which reduced demand by 900 MW.