Canada-US consortium will showcase microgrid applications and advances

A North Amer­i­can con­sor­tium will build a set of mul­ti-util­i­ty micro­grid projects to demon­strate how micro­grids can help inte­grate renew­ables with advanced soft­ware and save mon­ey. Util­i­ty par­tic­i­pants in the project—Emera Maine (for­mer­ly Ban­gor Hydro),Nova Sco­tia Pow­er and Toron­to Hydro will team up with Opus One Solu­tions, Advanced Micro­grid Solu­tions (AMS),Smarter Grid Solu­tions and the Cen­ter for Urban Ener­gy at Ryer­son Uni­ver­si­ty to demon­strate micro­grid capa­bil­i­ties at projects both in Maine and East­ern Cana­da. These include deliv­ery of vir­tu­al resources—the exper­tise of team mem­ber AMS—as well as a microgrid’s abil­i­ty to pro­vide feed­er load relief, volt/​VAR opti­miza­tion and con­ser­va­tion volt­age reduc­tion. Emera Maine will offer an exam­ple of micro­grids as a “non-wires alter­na­tive” that can serve in place of sub­sta­tions or oth­er infra­struc­ture. Emera said the project will pay for itself, with no sub­sidy from util­i­ty ratepay­ers. The micro­grid will also include a Lev­el 2 elec­tric vehi­cle charg­ing sta­tion and an advanced micro­grid con­troller, with a bat­tery sup­plied by Tes­la, Micro­grid Knowl­edge report­ed.

Nova Sco­tia Pow­er will build a feed­er-based micro­grid with wind pow­er and both grid-scale and res­i­den­tial ener­gy stor­age. Toron­to Hydro’s project will fea­ture dis­trib­uted ener­gy resources man­age­ment. Ontario-based Opus One Solu­tions, a soft­ware com­pa­ny, is lead­ing the inter­na­tion­al project, which also will demon­strate the abil­i­ty of micro­grids to trans­act in region­al whole­sale markets.

To read the full arti­cle, vis­it Elec​tric​i​ty​Pol​i​cy​.com.