Smart Grid News
Microgrid Controller Competition Announced By NREL
The Microgrid Controller Innovation Challenge is one of four initiatives launched under the U.S. Department of Energy-Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's new $2.5 million Lab-Bridge program.
Read more →Haiti Microgrid Developer Wakes Up To Daunting New Role In Wake Of Hurricane Matthew
In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Matthew, Sigora was on hand to support emergency relief efforts. Now the clean energy microutility is raising $96k and leveraging its supply chain, private sector networks, and local community ties to get critical assistance…
Read more →Watch This Fishing Village In Haiti Get Transformed by A Solar Microgrid
Sigora Solar recently completed a solar powered microgrid in Mole Saint Nicolas, Haiti - a remote fishing village seven hours by truck from Port Au Prince. Sigora is a for-profit company that bills themselves as the green utility. The microgrid…
Read more →War of Currents Unsettled as DC Microgrid, EV, DER, and Efficient Loads Favor DC
New DC Microgrid Opportunities Are Opening Up, Causing Many To Rethink The Entire Electric Grid. Universities, companies, and governments have been lining up for years to demonstrate the potential of DC microgrids, and the next generation of DC microgrid architectures…
Read more →Bipartisan Microgrid Support Helps Push Energy Bill Forward
At 85-12, the senate has passed the first energy bill since 2007 with overwhelming bi-partisan support. It's a historic $37.5 billion energy and water bill that could shape the energy transition in the United States in a more directed, thoughtful…
Read more →Connecting the Dots Along the Emerging Energy Internet of Things
One 12 recently funded ARPA-E microgrid projects is taking place in Lubbock, Texas, where DNV GL, Group NIRE and GELI will develop and operate an ¨Internet of Energy¨ (IoEn) platform that integrates management of as many as 100 distributed energy resources (DERs).
Read more →SDG&E to Add as Much as 140MW of Preferred Energy Resources
California's leading renewable energy utility aims to tap into new energy storage, renewable energy, distributed generation, energy efficiency and demand response (DR) systems capacity as it continues its drive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts.
Read more →Forging Win-Win Solutions in the Evolving DER Integration Landscape
By Peter Asmus The stars appear to have aligned for distributed energy resources (DER) to play an increasingly important role in providing energy services to consumers. Some see this growth in capacity from devices such as solar photovoltaic (PV) panels,…
Read more →Energy Storage Advances to Fuel Microgrids, Virtual Power Plants
Energy storage will increasingly be a viable option to conventional utility grid and substation upgrades as load profiles and population change, fueling growth in virtual power plants, according to a new Navigant Research report.
Read more →Panasonic Unveils Green Tower Distributed Energy-as-a-Service Solution
Panasonic's Green Tower is the latest entry into what's becoming a crowded, highly competitive cleantech market segment – Cloud-based ICT platforms that make it seem deceptively simple and easy to manage a power grid made up of distributed assets.
Read more →SolarCity and Tesla Package First Solar-Storage PPA To Deliver Solar Energy On Demand in Kaua'i
SolarCity announced it had chosen sister company Tesla's Powerpack to provide 52MWh of energy storage for what's billed as the U.S.' first utility-scale solar PV-energy storage system being built on the Hawai'ian island of Kauai'i.
Read more →Over 5 Million Smart Electric Meters To Be Rolled Out By Con Edison, Orange & Rockland Utilities
New York regulated utilities Con Edison and O&R Utilities have decided to run with Silver Springs Networks' smart grid communications-computing platform, which is to be installed and form the core of AMI infrastructure that connects to more than 5 million smart electric and gas meters.
Read more →Why Low Energy Prices Rarely Reach Electric Consumers
Low Natural Gas Prices Would Be Comparable To The 2nd Biggest Stimulus Package Ever, Had They Benefited Electric Ratepayers After peaking in 2008, the collapse of natural gas prices theoretically saved Americans nearly $250 billion over 3 years. Had the…
Read more →GE Berlin Hybrid Power Plant Combines CHP, Solar and Smart Battery Storage
Along with solar PV and intelligent energy storage technology, combined heat and power (CHP) takes center stage in a Hyrbrid Power Plant GE has built to power its facility, households and local businesses in Berlin. Besides using PV and advanced battery technology to generate, store and dispatch electricity as demand requires the Hybrid Power Plant uses GE Jenbacher CHP technology to capture heat produced in various processes to heat water.
Read more →Solar Microgrids Could Yield Substantial Savings at City-wide Scale
Researchers from MIT, Italian and Saudi universities modeled installation and use of 20 microgrids with residential solar penetration of 0% and 20% in MIT's hometown of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Overall results showed average daily savings in power consumption of nearly 5kW as well as improved resilience to power outages.
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Austin Readies Launch of 2 SHINES Solar-Storage Pilot Projects
Austin Energy's SHINES pilot projects are to pave the way toward a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of $0.14/kWh for solar PV systems that employ advanced Li-ion battery-based storage to dispatch electrical power night and day.
Read more →Energy Efficiency Financing More than Doubles in 2015
Corporate funding in the energy efficiency sector more than doubled to nearly $1.2 billion in 2015, with debt and public market financing accounting for nearly 60% of total venture capital (VC) and corporate funding of energy efficiency companies, a good sign the market is maturing and that bankers and investors are becoming more comfortable with risks and rewards.
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Ericsson Unveils ¨Smart Metering as a Service¨ at CES 2016
Highly reliable, secure broadband network connectivity and automated machine-to-machine communications (M2M) – aka Internet of Things (IoT) – lie at the core of the growing number of Smart City initiatives that have been cropping up in the U.S. and around…
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Microgrid System Laboratory Partners To Include NREL, DOE, Clean Coalition, Duke Energy and others
Most existing microgrids are inefficient, poorly optimized, and overwhelmingly diesel-powered. The newly formed Microgrid System Laboratory in Santa Fe, New Mexico is hoping to change that. It will be a "fully-integrated innovation center for decentralized energy systems," focusing on microgrid…
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U.K.'s First C&I Automated Demand Response Program Launched by Honeywell, Pearlstone
The advent of automated demand response (ADR) technology is enabling owners of commercial and industrial (C&I) facilities to earn revenues and reduce their energy bills by helping distribution utilities enhance grid operations and management. Given the scale of distribution utility…
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