Some 6,610 new microgrid projects representing 31.784MW have been identified in the first quarter of 2020 by Guidehouse Insights.

36.3% of the new microgrid projects are in North America. This means North America has overtaken the Asia Pacific as a market leader. The Asia Pacific and Latin America follow North America in terms of number and capacity installed.

North America’s push for the top spot is due to a large quantity of fossil-based commercial and industrial system additions for resiliency.

On a segment basis, remote microgrids and C&I represent more than 65% of all microgrid capacity globally at 36.0% and 29.1%, respectively. According to the report, the remote segment represents 11,452.2MW of capacity, and C&I represents 9,263.9MW. Regarding new entries, the C&I segment accounts for 85.8% of new projects identified.

Shayne Willette, research analyst with Guidehouse Insights, said:“North America’s push for the top spot as the global capacity leader is due to a large quantity of fossil-based commercial and industrial (C&I) system additions being deployed as resiliency solutions.

“This contrasts with last year’s findings, which showed a large amount of rural electrification projects in Asia Pacific and the Middle East & Africa.”

Click here for more information about the report.

A hospital in Victoria, Texas, later this month will announce commissioning of a new microgrid, likely to be one of the first healthcare microgrid to come on line during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of course, the timing is fortuitous — Citizens Medical Center announced plans to install the 2.8 MW microgrid long before the pandemic, about a year ago, spurred by a different disaster, Hurricane Harvey.

But the project stands out because it will draw attention at a time when the argument is likely to intensify for microgrids at critical facilities, such as hospitals, community shelters, grocery stores and data centers. Power outages could be catastrophic in places where the pandemic has put these facilities under extreme pressure, especially if utility crews are spread thin.

Citizens learned what it’s like to face a power outage with only emergency generators when Harvey hit Texas in August 2017. The back-up system provided only enough capacity to support the equipment, life safety and critical loads required for regulatory compliance — a common circumstance in hospitals. As a result, the hospital had to evacuate patients.

Built in partnership with Texas-based Enchanted Rock, the new natural gas microgrid will keep the hospital fully powered during a grid failure.

The project is also providing cost and environmental benefits for the hospital.

The healthcare microgrid will operate under Enchanted Rock’s resiliency-as-a-service offering, which allows hosts to pay a fraction of what they would pay if they owned the microgrid outright. For this installation, Citizens only paid 20% of the total cost of ownership.

Enchanted Rock is able to do this because it leverages the microgrid for use by the grid when the hospital does not need its backup power. The company aggregates microgrid systems and sells their output to the grid to earn revenue that subsidizes the cost of the systems.

Microgrid projects could play a major role bolstering the electric grid in Africa, which needs roughly $1 trillion in investments, according to a white paper by researchers at Boston University.

The power system in sub-Saharan Africa is generally poorly developed and its quality ranges widely from country to country, and even within countries, the researchers said in their paper, “Bringing Power and Progress to Africa in a Financially and Environmentally Sustainable Manner.”

About 600 million people out of Africa’s 1.3 billion population lack electricity, according to the report.

Africa’s weak transmission system, especially between countries, presents a major barrier to large, centralized power projects, the researchers said.

“This fact drives African electricity sector development towards a greater reliance on generation additions in smaller increments — which in turn provides additional impetus for the deployment of solar and wind projects that are already benefiting from declining cost trends,” the researchers said. “The advancement of energy storage technologies will also support an increasing trend towards distributed renewable energy generation assets.”

Mega grids likely to decline in importance
Although Africa’s power sector is ripe for investment, project finance in the continent is risky given poor revenue streams in the electricity sector and country risks, according to the Boston University researchers.

Large-scale electricity infrastructure projects — power plants larger than 100 MW and long-distance transmission lines — will increasingly be deemed too risky for the returns that they can offer, the researchers said.

Often it is a storm or other disaster that leads businesses to install a microgrid. But for a Norwegian soccer club, the impetus emerged as they began to view their arena roof differently.

“This project kicked off with a wild idea that it must be possible to use the roof of our arena for something useful,” said Einar Håndlykken, managing director of Odd’s Ballklubb, a soccer club determined to be the greenest in Europe.

Indeed, the Skagerak Arena proved a roof could be far more than a shelter. The roof now sports 18,790 square feet of solar panels that serve as the core of a sophisticated microgrid that not only feeds energy to the stadium but also serves 15 nearby homes in Skien, Norway, a city of 55,000 inhabitants.

In addition, the facility acts as a learning lab for the local utility, Skagerak Nett, helping it collect insights into the operation of a prosumer system — one that both consumes and produces energy in its relationship with the utility.

Called the Skagerak Energilab, the microgrid operates with 800 kW of solar, paired with an 800 kW/1100 kWh battery, which serves the arena’s 375,000 kWh load in concert with power from the local utility.

Soccer club energy use spikes
A multi-tasking controls system and automated energy management helps the soccer club achieve goals to save money, green its energy supply and keep the lights on.

Electric load more than doubles on game days, a common phenomenon for sports matches, but the microgrid helps manage costs through peak shaving. The microgrid assists the soccer club with its green goals by maximizing the use of the on-site solar. At the same time, the system ensures that there are no power outages, especially during soccer matches.

Choosing electric buses powered by a microgrid was an easy decision for the Antelope Valley Transit Authority (AVTA), which expects significant fuel savings, resilience and cleaner air from the project in the Los Angeles , Calif. area.

“This is a no brainer,” said Macy Neshati, executive director and CEO of AVTA, which provides local, commuter and dial-a-ride service to more than 450,000 residents in the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale. Residents in unincorporated portions of northern Los Angeles County are also served.

AVTA now operates 44 transit buses that are electrified, and plans to electrify another 30 commuter buses and add a microgrid that will provide 100% of the charging for buses. The microgrid will be housed at AVTA’s bus maintenance depot, he said. The buses will be charged when needed while they’re at sites located along routes, away from the depot, and those sites will have solar and batteries.

When the microgrid is complete, charging prices will drop significantly, he said. AVTA now pays Southern California Edison (SCE) and Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) 13 cents/kWh for charging. That includes the utilities’ agreeing to wave “demand charges and onerous fees,” he said.

Under a new contract with Duke Energy, the price for charging buses at five sites that are located outside the main bus depot will be 9.5 cents/kWh. But when buses are being charged directly by the microgrid at the bus maintenance depot, prices could be as low as 4.5 cents/kWh, Neshati said.

No wheeling charges with microgrid
The extra 5 cents/kWh for the offsite charging stations is due to wheeling charges from the utilities, a fee to cover costs of moving power from a generation facility to the distribution lines. He noted that the wheeling charges don’t apply when buses are charged directly by the microgrid.

AVTA will also meet California’s low-carbon fuel standards, providing additional savings. “For electricity use for charging electric vehicles (EV), you get low carbon fuel standard credits,” he said.

The state’s low carbon fuel standards are designed to cut the carbon intensity of transportation fuels. The state developed the standards — which consider greenhouse gas emissions from extraction to combustion — to meet California’s climate bill. AVTA owns its credits, which can be sold.

The Maine House has approved a microgrid bill that would open the state to microgrid development and clarify utility and operator roles.

L.D. 13, passed by the House on a 85-54 vote in mid-March, directs the Maine Public Utilities Commission to approve microgrid proposals of up to 25 MW if they are in the public interest.

The bill originally had a 10-MW cap on the size of potential microgrids, but Mt. Desert Island is considering setting up a microgrid and the Joint Standing Committee on Energy, Utilities and Technology decided to increase the cap to match the island’s needs, according to Rep. Seth Berry, one of the panel’s chairs.

Maine technically allows microgrids, but under current law it is easier to form a utility to provide microgrid services than to simply establish a microgrid, Berry said in an interview.

“It’s not possible to set up a true microgrid,” Berry said. “The minute you need poles and wires to deliver power between customers, then you’re acting as a utility.”

To deal with that issue, the bill declares that microgrid operators would not be deemed public utilities under Maine statute.

Criteria for regulatory review
The bill sets criteria the PUC must use when reviewing microgrids proposals, including that they meet Maine’s renewable portfolio standard requirements and that they are in the service territory of a utility with at least 50,000 customers.

Also, anyone proposing a microgrid must have the financial and technical capacity to build and operate one, according to the bill. The microgrid must be shown not to hurt grid reliability.

The Maine House has approved a microgrid bill that would open the state to microgrid development and clarify utility and operator roles.

L.D. 13, passed by the House on a 85-54 vote in mid-March, directs the Maine Public Utilities Commission to approve microgrid proposals of up to 25 MW if they are in the public interest.

The bill originally had a 10-MW cap on the size of potential microgrids, but Mt. Desert Island is considering setting up a microgrid and the Joint Standing Committee on Energy, Utilities and Technology decided to increase the cap to match the island’s needs, according to Rep. Seth Berry, one of the panel’s chairs.

Maine technically allows microgrids, but under current law it is easier to form a utility to provide microgrid services than to simply establish a microgrid, Berry said in an interview.

“It’s not possible to set up a true microgrid,” Berry said. “The minute you need poles and wires to deliver power between customers, then you’re acting as a utility.”

To deal with that issue, the bill declares that microgrid operators would not be deemed public utilities under Maine statute.

Criteria for regulatory review
The bill sets criteria the PUC must use when reviewing microgrids proposals, including that they meet Maine’s renewable portfolio standard requirements and that they are in the service territory of a utility with at least 50,000 customers.

Also, anyone proposing a microgrid must have the financial and technical capacity to build and operate one, according to the bill. The microgrid must be shown not to hurt grid reliability.

There must also be a contractual relationship between the microgrid operator and consumers within the area to be served by the proposed microgrid.

In a key change, the bill was amended to remove language barring investor-owned utilities and their affiliates from owning and operating microgrids.

When reviewing proposed projects, the PUC may consider possible ratepayer effects, positive or negative, benefits from increased resilience or reliability of the electric grid, economic development benefits or “any other factors” the commission considers necessary to promote the public interest, according to the bill

In an era of bipartisan wrangling, it turns out microgrids are one thing US voters agree upon — at least once they understand them.

That’s the finding of a survey conducted for the Civil Society Institute, a Massachusetts think tank that works to uncover common ground on education, healthcare, water, energy and other issues.

Last year the institute decided to take a deep look at microgrids after its research into renewable energy indicated that microgrids hold strong universal appeal.

Their polling of 1,000 voters in October, and qualitative discussions with 400 voters, upheld the premise. Democrats, Independents and Republicans overwhelmingly liked the microgrid concept — once it was explained to them.

Initially, the majority of all voters (83%) said they had never heard of the concept (56%), or they had heard of it but had the wrong impression (27%).

What voters like about microgrids
But after they were given a definition*, the conversation became animated and the audience wanted to learn more, according to pollster Vince Breglio.

“I was amazed at how much people had to say about a concept they had not understood and only had a short paragraph of explanation about,” said Breglio, advisor to US presidents, senators and governors as well as such corporations as Sony, Toyota and Caterpillar.

So what did they like about microgrid technology?

That’s where ideology did come into play. Democrats tended to see microgrids as a climate solution, as did women, younger voters and Hispanics. Republicans, older voters, and those with higher incomes favored messaging related to protecting electric supply against hacking or terrorism.

The survey also uncovered strong support for community microgrids when they were described as part of grid modernization.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) could alter who needs reliable energy — and when — and place new importance on residential microgrids.

While it’s too soon to gauge energy trends after society emerges from isolatation, short-term indicators may offer clues.

For one, we’re seeing what it means when a significant portion of the US population makes home their workplace.

Before COVID-19, about 5 million people, or 3.6% of the workforce, worked from home, according to Global Workplace Analytics’ analysis of 2018 American Community Service (ACS) data.

Now with as many as 56% of workers operating from home, skeptical employers are forced to test the approach. Kate Lister, president of the analytics firm, believes many will see the advantages and continue the practice.

How many will keep working from home after COVID-19?
“Our prediction is that the longer people are required to work at home, the greater the adoption we will see when the dust settles. We believe, based on historical trends, that those who were working remotely before the pandemic, will increase their frequency after they are allowed to return to their offices,” Lister said.

She estimates that work-at-home employees could grow from 3.6% to 25-30% of the workforce within the next two years.

This could shift the energy landscape meaningfully, given that Lister estimates a home-based worker adds 3,000 kWh per year to household electricity use, a significant uptick. Average annual consumption for a US household is about 11,000 kWh.