From EnergyFreedomCO.org Many Colorado cities have ambitious energy goals but no practical and cost-effective way to reach them. Over one million Coloradans live in cities with the goal of obtaining 100% of their electricity from renewable energy sources. Many large companies also have aggressive renewable energy goals. This paper reviews six possible solutions that would allow cities and large companies …
Just purchased by Shell: sonnen provides virtual power plant and grid balancing services equivalent to two peaker plants, from home energy storage systems
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/15/shell-acquires-sonnen/ excerpt: …The real secret sauce with sonnen is its ability to innovate beyond just the hardware. Building a smart energy storage appliance is neat and noteworthy, but sonnen has demonstrated its ability to innovate beyond the box and has shaken the foundations of the industry with its disruptive innovations in neighborhood energy storage and whole home energy storage that includes smart …
A Microgrid Toolkit to Bring Equity to Power Restoration in Puerto Rico: RMI
January 21, 2019 Megan Kerins and Alejandra Castrodad-Rodríguez of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) describe a new microgrid toolkit to ensure power reliability for those most vulnerable in Puerto Rico. Megan Kerins, RMI When the lights went out September 20, 2017, no one could have foreseen that it would take 130 days to restore power to seven out of ten people in …
California Wildfires Prompt Thinking about Microgrids
California Wildfires and Related Outages Get City Thinking about a Microgrid, Andrew Burger, Microgrid Knowledge, January 24, 2019 The City of Calistoga, California is moving forward with early-stage discussions with the non-profit Clean Coalition for a community microgrid — with risk of wildfires and utility power shutdowns driving talks. Fire in California wine country. California National Guard photo, Oct. 12, 2017 “We …
Community Microgrids
Bringing communities an unparalleled trifecta of economic, environmental, and resilience benefits Learn about our Community Microgrid Initiative What is a Community Microgrid? A Community Microgrid is a coordinated local grid area served by one or more distribution substations and supported by high penetrations of local renewables and other distributed energy resources (DER), such as energy storage and demand response. Community …
How to Keep Africa’s Minigrids from Becoming a Bridge to Nowhere
How to Keep Africa’s Minigrids from Becoming a Bridge to Nowhere, by Elisa Wood in Microgrid Knowledge January 21, 2019 A push is on to bring electricity to the nearly one billion people who lack it worldwide. But if you build it will they come? Apparently not, as some minigrid developers are finding in Sub-Saharan Africa. By Serg64/Shutterstock.com Electricity does little good …
Translating DER and Microgrid Complexity into Simplicity & Bankability
By Lisa Cohn, Translating DER and Microgrid Complexity into Simplicity & Bankability, Microgrid News, September 21, 2018 The California Energy Commission (CEC) wants to make microgrids more bankable. But to do so it must first translate DER and microgrid complexity into simplicity. Photo by Ditty_about_summer/Shutterstock.com That’s the aim of a $2 million grant that the commission awarded to the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). In …
Hurricane Florence crippled electricity and coal — solar and wind were back the next day
By IRINA IVANOVA, 60 min and MONEYWATCH September 25, 2018, 9:24 AM Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Florence swamped North and South Carolina, thousands of residents who get power from coal-fired utilities remain without electricity. Yet solar installations, which provide less than 5 percent of North Carolina’s energy, were up and running the day after the storm, according to electricity news outlet GTM. And while half of …
Cape Cod Military Base To Run Fully On Renewable Energy: Basewide microgrid provided job training and saves money annually
September 10th, 2018 by Carolyn Fortuna on Clean Technica The US Department of Defense’s (DoD) first wind-powered microgrid is nearly ready at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Unveiled on August 29, 2018, by the 102nd Intelligence Wing and project partners, the “grid-connected microgrid” will serve as a model for similar Air National Guard and Department of Defense (DoD) projects. …
Investor-owned utilities in California forecast that by 2025, 85 percent will leave their systems for renewable energy through community choice aggregation
Microgrid Knowledge, Aug 2018 Quickly growing community choice aggregations (CCA) are expected to play a significant role in drawing 85 percent of customers away from California’s investor-owned utilities by 2025, according to a new report. Provided by Wang An Q/Shutterstock.com The community aggregation report was one of three on grid disruption released by Next 10, an organization with a goal of improving …