Featured in Time for microgrids to go macro? – 11-2019

In position to undermine utilities

Plenty of ideas surrounding the future design of the U.S. grid model are floating around the solar industry these days, but few seem as compelling as the solar+storage-based microgrid. These local electrical communities are proliferating, particularly on the East Coast and West Coast, including the hallowed turf where once mighty utilities — like now-bankrupt Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) — defended their monopolies.

By

Charles W. Thurston

12 Nov 2019

NEC_Energy_solutions_Microgrid_US_California

Image: NEC Energy Solutions

Microgrids are fast becoming the basic building block of distributed energy resources (DERs), starting from single home or business sites, expanding to local areas, then expanding to community choice aggregators (CCAs), and yet again to cross-CCA and cross-utility regional areas. While traditionally utilities have been structured as top-down models, microgrids are organized from the bottom …

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