Technical and economic feasibility of a microgrid for a fire station in Humboldt County, California.

Microgrids are emerging as a promising solution to unreliable grid energy. Today, California is not only witnessing grid resiliency challenges from natural disasters such as wildfires, earthquakes, floods and heatwaves, but it is also seeking to green the grid and bring more renewables online. For example, Humboldt County, where this project is focused, has recently experienced an earthquake of 6.4M (on December 22nd, 2022), which shut down the regional grid for ~20 hours. Microgrid adoption enables critical facilities to operate seamlessly. The Humboldt Bay Fire Station (HBFS) No.1 is one such example, where first responders work to protect citizens against emergencies, be it emergency medical services (EMS) operations or fire rescue or even helping in restoration of power lines. This study involves a techno-economic analysis of a microgrid design that could support efficient and seamless operations for the fire station as it serves the people of Humboldt County during emergencies. A clean energy microgrid for the station aligns with the Humboldt County GHG emission target to reach net zero by 2030, and could provide resilient power to their general and critical loads during regular operations and emergencies. The recommended microgrid for the HBFS No. 1 facility includes a 70-kW photovoltaic (PV) array and a 90 kW/360 kWh battery energy storage system (BESS). The project cost ranges from $300k to$600k (depending upon the level of investment tax credits (ITC) the microgrid project would get). It provides 51-day resiliency in the best case and 28-hour resiliency in the worst case depending upon the weather condition. The system would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity use at the station by over 98% annually. Considering the potential availability of incentives and the value of resiliency (VoR), the microgrid project for HBFS No.1 demonstrates promising economic feasibility results. The next steps involve further evaluation of the project\u27s financial viability, engaging with relevant stakeholders to secure funding, and proceeding with the detailed design and implementation phases of the microgrid

A review of microgrid development in the United States – A decade of progress on policies, demonstrations, controls, and software tools

Microgrids have become increasingly popular in the United States. Supported by favorable federal and local policies, microgrid projects can provide greater energy stability and resilience within a project site or community. This paper reviews major federal, state, and utility-level policies driving microgrid development in the United States. Representative U.S. demonstration projects are selected and their technical characteristics and non-technical features are introduced. The paper discusses trends in the technology development of microgrid systems as well as microgrid control methods and interactions within the electricity market. Software tools for microgrid design, planning, and performance analysis are illustrated with each tool's core capability. Finally, the paper summarizes the successes and lessons learned during the recent expansion of the U.S. microgrid industry that may serve as a reference for other countries developing their own microgrid industries

EcoBlock: Grid Impacts, Scaling, and Resilience

Widespread deployment of EcoBlocks has the potential to transform today's electricity system into one that is more resilient, flexible, efficient and sustainable. In this vision, the system will consist of self- su cient, renewable-powered, block-scale entities that can deliberately adjust their net power exchange and can optimize performance, maintain stability, support each other, or disconnect entirely from the grid as needed. This report is intended as an independent analysis of the potential relationships, both constructive and adverse, between EcoBlocks and the grid

Microgrids: Legal and Regulatory Hurdles for a More Resilient Energy Infrastructure

Natural disasters and climate change have made it apparent that energy infrastructure needs to be modernized and microgrids are one type of technology that can help the electricity grid become more resilient, reliable, and efficient. Different states have begun developing microgrid pilot projects including California, New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. The City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is the first city to propose implementing “energy districts” of microgrids that will serve as critical infrastructure, in the first phase, and then expand to commercial and community settings. This large project involves many shareholders including public utilities, government agencies, and private entities. Utilizing microgrids on such a large scale raises issues regarding its classification, as energy generation or energy storage, and whether it should be regulated by public utilities, private entities, or municipalities. In a state like Pennsylvania where the energy market has been deregulated, there is strong concern on what the public utilities involvement will be with microgrid projects. This Note focuses on the regulatory issues that are raised with the construction and operation of microgrids at such a large scale in Pittsburgh. It addresses the difficulties that arise when implementing microgrids in a deregulated energy market state such as Pennsylvania, where little to no statutory language exists regarding microgrids. It will give an overview of proposed Pennsylvania legislation that may impact a public utilities’ control over microgrid technology and the benefits and costs when examining the extent of the public utilities’ role regarding ownership and control of microgrids in a deregulated energy market

UCSD's Microgrid: A Pattern for Future Energy Generation?

Climate change is an urgent and pressing issue, as temperatures rise due to excessive carbon dioxide emissions, as well as short lived climate pollutants (black carbon, methane, hydrofluorocarbons, and tropospheric ozone) nations are beginning toexperience the consequences of climate change. The Bending the Curve Report states that mitigating short- lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) may reduce warming by 0.6 degrees Celsius, allowing the world to implement zero emission technology (Ramanathan et al; pg. 5). According to the report, an 80% reduction in carbon emissions, along with SLCP mitigation action, will maintain global warming below 2 degrees Celsius for the rest of the century (Ramanathan et al; pg. 14). Replacing natural gas with renewable energy will be essential to becoming carbon neutral, this will benefitnot only developed cities but reduce the need for SLCPs in rural and developing areas as well. UCSD is taking initiative through development of its microgrid, allowing the ability to produce our own energy and create independence from the main grid

WE ARE ALL GONNA DIE: HOW THE WEAK POINTS OF THE POWER GRID LEAVE THE UNITED STATES WITH AN UNACCEPTABLE RISK

Federal regulations aim to ensure grid reliability and harden it against outages; however, widespread outages continue. This thesis examines the spectrum of regulations to evaluate them. It outlines their structure, the regulations’ intent, and weighs them against evolving cyber and physical threats and natural disaster risks. Currently, the regulatory structure is incapable of providing uniform security. Federal standards protect only the transmission portion of the grid, leaving the distribution section vulnerable to attack due to varying regulations from state to state, or county to county. The regulations cannot adapt quickly enough to meet dynamic threats, rendering them less effective. Cyber threats can be so agile that protectors are unaware of vulnerabilities, and patching requirements are too lengthy, which increases the risk exposure. No current weather mitigation or standard is capable of protecting the grid despite regular natural disasters that cause power shutdowns. The thesis concludes that bridging these gaps requires not increasing protection standards, but redundancy. Redundancy, mirrored after the UK's infrastructure policy, is more likely to reduce failure risk through layered components and systems. Microgrids are proven effective in disasters to successfully deliver such redundancy and should be implemented across all critical infrastructure sectors.Civilian, Department of Homeland SecurityApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Integration of Data Driven Technologies in Smart Grids for Resilient and Sustainable Smart Cities: A Comprehensive Review

A modern-day society demands resilient, reliable, and smart urban infrastructure for effective and in telligent operations and deployment. However, unexpected, high-impact, and low-probability events such as earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, and hurricanes make the design of such robust infrastructure more complex. As a result of such events, a power system infrastructure can be severely affected, leading to unprecedented events, such as blackouts. Nevertheless, the integration of smart grids into the existing framework of smart cities adds to their resilience. Therefore, designing a resilient and reliable power system network is an inevitable requirement of modern smart city infras tructure. With the deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT), smart cities infrastructures have taken a transformational turn towards introducing technologies that do not only provide ease and comfort to the citizens but are also feasible in terms of sustainability and dependability. This paper presents a holistic view of a resilient and sustainable smart city architecture that utilizes IoT, big data analytics, unmanned aerial vehicles, and smart grids through intelligent integration of renew able energy resources. In addition, the impact of disasters on the power system infrastructure is investigated and different types of optimization techniques that can be used to sustain the power flow in the network during disturbances are compared and analyzed. Furthermore, a comparative review analysis of different data-driven machine learning techniques for sustainable smart cities is performed along with the discussion on open research issues and challenges

Software Defined Networks based Smart Grid Communication: A Comprehensive Survey

The current power grid is no longer a feasible solution due to ever-increasing user demand of electricity, old infrastructure, and reliability issues and thus require transformation to a better grid a.k.a., smart grid (SG). The key features that distinguish SG from the conventional electrical power grid are its capability to perform two-way communication, demand side management, and real time pricing. Despite all these advantages that SG will bring, there are certain issues which are specific to SG communication system. For instance, network management of current SG systems is complex, time consuming, and done manually. Moreover, SG communication (SGC) system is built on different vendor specific devices and protocols. Therefore, the current SG systems are not protocol independent, thus leading to interoperability issue. Software defined network (SDN) has been proposed to monitor and manage the communication networks globally. This article serves as a comprehensive survey on SDN-based SGC. In this article, we first discuss taxonomy of advantages of SDNbased SGC.We then discuss SDN-based SGC architectures, along with case studies. Our article provides an in-depth discussion on routing schemes for SDN-based SGC. We also provide detailed survey of security and privacy schemes applied to SDN-based SGC. We furthermore present challenges, open issues, and future research directions related to SDN-based SGC.Comment: Accepte

Performance Optimisation of Standalone and Grid Connected Microgrid Clusters

Remote areas usually supplied by isolated electricity systems known as microgrids which can operate in standalone and grid-connected mode. This research focus on reliable operation of microgrids with minimal fuel consumption and maximal renewables penetration, ensuring least voltage and frequency deviations. These problems can be solved by an optimisation-based technique. The objective function is formulated and solved with a Genetic Algorithm approach and performance of the proposal is evaluated by exhaustive numerical analyses in Matlab