Italian multinational energy corporation ENI is building an off-grid, solar-storage microgrid at an oil and gas facility in Tunisia and integrating it with existing, on-site natural gas generation.

All the energy produced by the off-grid microgrid will be used to power the facility’s upstream operations.

Metka EGN, a wholly owned subsidiary of Greece’s Mytilineos, is providing engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services that will result in the deployment of the 5-MW solar PV and lithium-ion battery energy storage sysstem. Located at ENI Tunisia’s ADAM oil concession, in what’s known as the Tataouine governate of Tunisia, the microgrid is expected to come online in early 2020.

“The energy produced will be consumed on-site, enabling the upstream operations to significantly reduce gas consumption and therefore avoiding 6,500 metric tons/year of CO2 equivalent emissions,” said Antigoni Fakou, Metka spokesperson.

The project also is expected to improve efficiency and lower costs, according to the project partners.

Metka will build, operate and maintain the microgrid for two years, then transfer operations and maintenance to ENI.

Mytilineos has been doing an increasing amount of solar-storage microgrid development since acquiring Metka and establishing a presence in the Mediterranean region and in developing markets, Africa in particular.

Another subsidiary, Metka Power West Africa is building off-grid microgrids at four Nigerian universities.

Microgrids are becoming more and more prevalent for good reason. Microgrid options act as modern approaches to solving multiple energy challenges. But choosing a microgrid can be difficult, and they are expensive; complex systems, and may require more time to engineer and install than other solutions.

That’s why a new handbook from S&C Electric is designed to help determine whether a microgrid is the best solution for you and to prepare your team if you decide to pursue building one.

What problems are you trying to solve?
Bottom line: Outages cost you and your customers money. In this digital age, people expect to be connected at all times, and even short outages are increasingly unacceptable.

Weather is also an unpredictable challenge, and natural disasters can cause massive damage. And technologies exist that harden the grid and improve resiliency.

Further environmental concerns include geographical challenges, such as mountains or forests, that can make it difficult or expensive to deliver reliable power.

According to S&C Electric, new technologies and emerging social concerns are causing significant energy industry disruption.

These include grid defections, where some customers, especially in the commercial/industrial sector, have opted to generate their own power to lower costs and control reliability, using the electric grid instead as backup power.

Further, there is also increasing pressure to reduce harmful gases and use renewables in lieu of fossil-based generation.

Part of this change is spurred by the fact that coal and nuclear plants are rapidly being replaced with renewable energy and natural gas generation.

“Adjusting to new fuel mixes means strategies must change,” S&C pointed out. The existing infrastructure isn’t designed for rapid change, and upgrades require significant capital, according to S&C.

Customer-usage patterns are changing as well. The grid was originally designed when customers were strictly power users. It’s not well structured to handle new ways customers participate in the electricity market, such as through use of electric vehicles, time-of-day pricing, and distributed generation.

Ontario-based municipal utility North Bay Hydro Services has partnered with smart grid solutions firm S&C Electric Company to launch Canada’s first utility-scale microgrid system.

Ontario-based municipal utility North Bay Hydro Services has partnered with smart grid solutions firm S&C Electric Company to launch Canada’s first utility-scale microgrid system.

The Community Energy Park has the ability to operate in island-mode to power some 51,000 residents in the event of a winter storm, outage or other disasters.

The 789KW microgrid system is powered by two 265kW natural gas generators, a 9kW of solar, 7kW of rooftop panels and a 2kW solar flower.

The microgrid has been developed in response to the 2013 ice storm which left the province of Ontario plunged in darkness.

The microgrid system means North Bay Hydro Services is now providing 87% of the electricity requirements for the Community Energy Park.

In addition to enhancing energy resilience, the microgrid is expected to help the city to reduce its carbon footprint.

The microgrid has been developed in response to the 2013 ice storm which left the province of Ontario plunged in darkness.

The microgrid system means North Bay Hydro Services is now providing 87% of the electricity requirements for the Community Energy Park.

In addition to enhancing energy resilience, the microgrid is expected to help the city to reduce its carbon footprint.

Researchers at the University of Texas San Antonio (UTSA) have developed an optimization tool for microgrids that allows homes to stay off grid as long as possible, generally using solar, storage and smart meters.

The researchers recently received a patent from the US Patent and Trademark Office, based on a grant from the US Department of Energy.

The tool aims to optimize the use of solar, storage, electric vehicles and other loads and resources to ensure a building remains off grid as long as possible, as inexpensively as possible, said Brian Kelley, associate professor in UTSA’s electrical and computer engineering department.

Called Power Quality of Service Optimization for Microgrids, the tool decides when to use solar or other renewable energy systems, when to store it, and when to rely on power from the grid.

“There are statistics and predictions you can use for when clouds will be overhead or when cloudy days will occur. These variables can be fed into the optimization,” he explained. “If you see a cloudy day tomorrow, you could increase the amount of storage today.”

Increasing use of pure renewables
The variables that determine how long a homeowner or business can be off grid depend on the size of the renewable energy system, likely solar.

“By increasing the rated capacity of the renewable source and energy storage, you can get increasingly high utilization of pure renewables,” he said. “This invention allows you to do that as inexpensively as possible.”

The system also can control various loads, including household appliances, electric vehicle charging and lights, scheduling the best time to serve those loads.

That’s one of the features that makes the system unique, said Kelley. When certain loads are not needed, the system can stop delivering power to them if the power is needed elsewhere.

“There are schedulers and smart meters and mission control systems that make this unique,” he said.

One of the largest microgrid projects in the country and one of the few proposed to support mass transit is moving forward in New Jersey.

On June 18, New Jersey Transit completed a public hearing for its NJ Transitgrid project. The comment period for the environmental impact statement for the project is open until July 19, 2019.

And on June 12, the Federal Transit Administration awarded NJ Transit $45.8 million for the project. Those funds are being matched with $15.2 million from the New Jersey Transportation Trust Fund Authority and will be used for the distributed generation portion of the NJ Transitgrid project.

The Federal Transit Administration grant is the first of $409 million of competitive resilience funds allocated to the NJ Transitgrid project under the Public Transportation Emergency Relief Program and the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013, which authorized $60 billion in funding for disaster relief agencies in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

“This funding will move NJ TRANSIT toward self-sufficiency in the event of a disaster such as Superstorm Sandy where commercial power systems may be limited or unavailable,” Kevin Corbett, executive director of NJ Transit, said in a statement.

The distributed generation portion of the project includes the design and construction of electrical power systems at three bus garages, three transit stations and the Port Imperial Ferry Terminal.

The overall project calls for the installation of a 104-MW to 140-MW generating facility comprising five gas turbines and one steam turbine configured and operated in combined-cycle mode, as well as two black start reciprocating engines and a 0.6 MW solar panel array.

The preferred site for the main facility of the project is a tract of land known as the Koppers Koke site in Kearny in Hudson County.

HYDERABAD, India, June 24, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — The microgrid market is driven by the improved DER (distributed energy resources) technologies such as micro turbines, combustion turbines, hybrid system, wind system and others. These technologies can integrate with microgrid and reduce carbon footprints significantly as compared to conventional grid. Moreover, several government initiatives are accelerating the demand for microgrid technology. For instance, as per 2016 Paris agreement, India has been given a target to reduce the emission intensity around 33-35% by 2030 below 2005 levels. Additionally, the evolution of IoT based platform are also increasing the ability of microgrid system. IoT enabled microgrids are convenient for utilities to track real-time energy consumption. Similarly, the demand response (DR) market is expected to grow by more than 10% CAGR during 2019-2025, due to rising government initiatives for achieving optimum energy utilization. The overall rapid growth in DR market will create opportunities for microgrid system.

The Microgrid market is poised to grow at a rapid pace owing to a wide range of applications in utilities and healthcare sector. The solar and wind based power generation has been accelerating the requirement of microgrids, as these energy sources can be integrated with microgrid in easy and economical manner. The growing demand for renewable energy is the major driving factor for the growth of microgrid market. The installed base of renewable energy is expected to reach approximately 1,731GW by 2021 more than 10% CAGR during 2018-2021. In the latest developments, in April 2019, ABB, an automation tech company with Rolls-Royce will introduce global microgrid cooperation, where they will offer microgrid based solution for utilities, commercial and industrial establishments. Similarly, Healthcare is another opportunistic sector for the growth of the microgrid market. The World Health Organization considered microgrid as an advantageous option to power health institution. Moreover, the healthcare industry being highly regulated industry need to follow strict power back up regulations. Microgrid provides an economical option for healthcare sector to provide backup power in cost effective manner. In 2018, Kaiser Permanente, an American healthcare company showcase their hospital solar-storage microgrid demonstration, which shows that hospital improved its operational efficiency by 20%. One of their medical center named Kaiser Richmond stands to save an additional 2.63-MWh of energy per year, which shows the annual savings of $394,000.

Michael Bakas, executive vice president, Ameresco, describes the benefits of green campus microgrids. Such projects help campuses reach sustainability markers, as well as economic goals when they are financed through energy performance contracts. In addition, campus microgrids can serve as learning labs that give graduating students a leg up in the job market. Elisa Wood, Microgrid Knowledge editor-in-chief, spoke with Bakas at Microgrid 2019 in San Diego.

More and more campuses — whether they serve healthcare, higher education or industry — are building microgrids.

What’s the impetus for this trend in campus microgrids?

Bakas said that campuses are trying to leverage microgrids to address resiliency challenges, as well hedge against the volatility the industry is seeing in energy demand.

Wood pointed out that higher education campuses often have aggressive sustainability goals, yet they use combined heat and power (CHP) plants that operate on fossil fuels.

How can these campuses achieve goals, for example, to achieve 100% green energy, and also take advantage of the efficiencies of CHP?

Bakas explained that more than half of the carbon footprint of a lot of campuses, especially in higher education, comes from the combustion of fossil fuels.

“One way to address this, especially with cogeneration, is to actually use renewable natural gas to displace the fossil fuel,” Bakas said, essentially “greening” the output from the generation facility.

Renewable natural gas, Bakas said, is a byproduct of facilities that produce biogas, such as a wastewater treatment plant. Or biogas may come from a landfill. It’s a gas already in the environment that can be processed, injected into a natural gas interstate pipeline and transported anywhere in the country.

ComEd is one of the growing number of utilities around the country which has sought regulatory approval and rate payer funds to develop and test microgrid pilot projects. The company’s Bronzeville project which went into service earlier this year, serves over 1000 residences, businesses, and institutions and will test a microgrid controller, solar power, and batteries operating on the grid, islanded when need be. A second phase of the project has raised a debate regarding renewables content and third-party ownership. Are we seeing a growing trend surrounding nearly always successful utility sponsored microgrid projects where advocates for renewables and independent development want to take utility ownership out of the future of microgrids?

Utility supported microgrid projects are demonstrating what almost everyone expected: microgrid projects provide a valuable alternative for critical facilities such as power system control centers, hospitals, airports, data centers, emergency management facilities, and central heating and cooling infrastructure, to name a few common examples. They offer resilience in case of outages, potentially cheaper or more complete backup than a second feeder in case of major outages, and potentially cleaner and cheaper generation than typical diesel backup generators. In addition, following several years of devastating wildfires, microgrids may be increasingly installed for emergency service use in states like California, where utilities may be required to de-energize power lines during periods of high wildfire risk.

In a recent case involving a proposal by San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) for multiple battery storage backed microgrid projects as part of the company’s aggressive fire safety defense program, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) blocked development of the projects because of demands for third-party participation in new storage related microgrid opportunities. This case provides an excellent example of the issues involved in the debate over utility versus third-party ownership of microgrids. SDG&E’s projects are intended to provide emergency support to public sector facilities that are critical to emergency wildfire response, including SDG&E owned infrastructure. Should a third party allowed to step into this role also be legally responsible for fire damage liability like utilities? More representative of the issues facing microgrid operators in other parts of the country is the situation where the microgrids proposed by SDG&E serve multiple utility customers and use utility infrastructure in certain operating modes. Regulators in Illinois have asked ComEd to propose a tariff that would provide payment for the use of utility infrastructure, should a third party own the microgrid.

Microgrid startup Go Electric secured a rare cleantech hardware exit when acquired by battery maker Saft this week.

The Indiana-based startup builds a compact microgrid controller, promising seamless backup power and integration with many types of energy devices. It made a name for itself when it met the Pentagon’s high bar for durable grid infrastructure, and has delivered four microgrid controllers to military bases and won contracts for three mobile systems.

Go Electric also branched into the commercial and industrial market in late 2017, chasing customers with resilience needs that could benefit from localized energy control, though that market has been slower to develop than its military applications.

The working relationship between acquirer and acquiree goes back three years, Go Electric CEO Lisa Laughner said in an interview at Greentech Media’s Grid Edge Innovation Summit this week.

Saft, the century-old manufacturer acquired by French energy major Total in 2016 for more than $1 billion, supplied batteries to Go Electric. Saft operates several factories in the U.S., including a 235,000 square-foot facility in Jacksonville, Florida, making its products compliant with the Buy American Act that governs federal procurements.

“Having Saft as our owner now gets rid of the startup stigma,” Laughner said. “Customers that might have been a little bit leery working with a startup company now don’t have to worry about that, because we’ve got the balance sheet of Saft — and Total, for that matter.”

The deal also expands Saft’s scope of operations in the grid edge market. Instead of just supplying batteries, like it did recently for a remote microgrid in an Alaskan salmon-fishing community, Saft can now sell power electronics and microgrid controls alongside its core product.

“This is right in line with what Total’s competitors are doing, getting into the C&I space and getting one more piece of that value chain,” said Elta Kolo, research manager for grid edge at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables.

Small electric grids have been around since the beginning of electric power, but with modern wide-area synchronous grids, microgrids are now the dominant form for small electric systems. Early electric grids were powered by bulky fossil fuel-powered engines and evolved from direct current grids to alternating current grids with central generation as grids quickly expanded across the first electrified cities. Still today, organizations often use small diesel/gas-powered generators as a backup for grid failures.

Diesel/gas generators are self-contained grid systems that typically maintain voltage and match loads. As diesel/gas generator operating costs are high, it is not normally economical to export diesel/gas-generated power into the wide-area synchronous grid.

The situation is different with new distributed wind and solar generation. These new renewables, along with gas generation, are the main source of new power generation and are replacing retired central station power generation. Power from distributed solar and wind can serve local loads, reduce transmission loads, and export power to the wide-area synchronous grids. However, large remote generation sites may need new transmission to connect to loads in distant population centers.

Some large solar and wind farms are generators without island capability that are connected to larger wide-area synchronous grids. Adding battery storage or diesel/gas generators to solar or wind generation forms a microgrid (Figure 1) and can provide potentially valuable island operation, increasing local power reliability and resiliency. Distributed energy microgrids are normally connected to the wide-area synchronous grids and microgrids are increasingly providing more advanced services than just bulk export power and serving local loads.

Benefits and Challenges of Distributed Microgrids

Distributed microgrids present a business model challenge to investor-owned utilities and transmission systems as these microgrids are increasingly able to compete in wholesale energy, capacity, and ancillary services markets, and displace utility loads and utility revenue. Utilities are increasingly building their own renewable generation, often with a microgrid architecture to meet the demands for new generation and grid reliability required by regulators, but utilities are being asked to do much more than compete with distributed power. ISOs, RTOs, utilities, and regulators are working to transition electric grids to allow fair competition to provide reliable low-cost power. Utilities were once a natural monopoly. Now, they are being asked to help build out an efficient, workable, low-carbon distributed system, and figure out how they will fit into that system.