2023 Year of the Rabbit for Microgrids, too--Moving Fast

Dec. 10, 2023
Microgrid Knowledge is appreciative of the more than half a million times viewers have hopped onto the website to read about industry developments.

This is the Year of the Rabbit on the Chinese calendar and that seems pretty appropriate to me – moving fast and making the most of the green.

The U.S. landscape is dotted more and more with dozens of resiliency+sustainability on-site power projects coming online, from military bases to ports and from developers to utilities. Our industry, which will be celebrated at the Microgrid Knowledge 2024 Conference April 22-24 in Baltimore, Maryland, keeps deepening its toehold in that landscape.

Microgrid Knowledge is appreciative of the more than half a million times viewers have hopped onto the website to read about industry developments. Our top stories included those about utility-scale microgrids developed by PG&E in California and Duke Energy in North Carolina.

The rising tide of vehicle electrification also provides opportunities for bidirectional use of electric vehicles as microgrids on wheels, as developments out of California show. But the Golden State isn’t the only one of the nifty 50 embracing microgrids: Texas voters approved a legislative plan to fund about $1.8 billion toward microgrid and distributed energy resource development statewide.

Microgrids are touching every facet of commercial, industrial and mission-critical energy transitions. It’s one for all and all for one in the Year of the Rabbit. And racing forward it’s going to get hotter: 2024 is the Year of the Dragon.

 

About the Author

Rod Walton, Managing Editor | Managing Editor

For Microgrid Knowledge editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].

I’ve spent the last 15 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. I was an energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World before moving to business-to-business media at PennWell Publishing, which later became Clarion Events, where I covered the electric power industry. I joined Endeavor Business Media in November 2021 to help launch EnergyTech, one of the company’s newest media brands. I joined Microgrid Knowledge in July 2023. 

I earned my Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. My career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World, all in Oklahoma . I have been married to Laura for the past 33-plus years and we have four children and one adorable granddaughter. We want the energy transition to make their lives better in the future. 

Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech are focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.

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