Full Quotes by “Five Biggest Reasons Story Participants

Bobby Butler of ELM Microgrid

“. BESS and microgrids have historically been implemented and viewed primarily as resilience plays. While resilience is still a major and highly important factor, it is far from the only reason to install a microgrid. Battery energy storage systems are capable of doing much more than one thing. A BESS is the gold-medal Olympic decathlete of the energy world. It can support peak shaving, demand response, grid services, backup power, and many other applications. A BESS is not deployed for just one reason, but for a multitude of reasons. The potential value stack is significant.

 2. Energy independence is rapidly becoming more valuable. Deploying a microgrid with battery energy storage can provide a competitive advantage for businesses and communities—not only by providing resilience when the grid is unavailable, but also by helping manage rising and unpredictable energy costs. Businesses and communities that deploy these systems give themselves greater financial and operational control over their energy future.

 3. The grid is not keeping pace with demand in many areas. New businesses—and existing businesses looking to expand or electrify—may be unable to obtain utility interconnections or infrastructure upgrades within an acceptable timeframe. These projects can take years and, in some cases, seven years or more. A microgrid with onsite generation and battery storage can provide a bridge to power in significantly less time.

 4. Ten years ago, grid outages were viewed as an occasional anomaly or inconvenience for much of the United States. That is no longer the case. Outages are becoming more frequent in many areas, and grid pressures are expected to continue growing in the coming years. Businesses and communities that can operate independently from the grid when necessary can reduce costly shutdowns and maintain critical operations.

 5. Microgrids can transform businesses from traditional utility ratepayers into active energy assets. Sites with microgrids can choose to purchase energy from the grid when it is available and priced advantageously. When it is not, those same businesses can rely on onsite generation and battery storage. A microgrid provides greater leverage, flexibility, and future-proofing.

James Richmond, CEO of e2Companies

1. Power has become a business constraint, not just a utility expense.

The U.S. energy challenge isn’t simply about generating more electricity. It’s increasingly about whether businesses can access reliable power where they need it, when they need it and on the timeline their operations require. For C&I customers, a microgrid can provide another path to power rather than making growth entirely dependent on traditional grid infrastructure. At Erie County’s Rath Building, for example, a 2 MW R3Di® deployment is helping modernize aging electrical infrastructure and support growing energy needs without waiting for lengthy traditional utility infrastructure upgrades.

“Power used to be treated like another operating expense. That’s no longer true. For a modern commercial or industrial facility, power is one of its most important operational assets. As energy costs rise and electricity demand grows, the question isn’t just whether there’s enough electricity. It’s whether you can affordably get the power you need, where and when you need it. If you can’t, power becomes a constraint on how quickly your business can grow.”

2. The lights are on. So why does the equipment keep failing?

Poor power quality can cost facilities twice: first through higher demand or power-factor-related utility charges, where applicable, and then through premature equipment failures and operational disruptions.

Clients have told us that recurring power blips, voltage fluctuations, and harmonic distortion can contribute to repeated failures of ECM motors, drives, controls, and other sensitive equipment, even when the facility never experiences a traditional outage. One example is a large-scale industrial client in Ohio that was experiencing poor power quality and rapid inrush current with a utility connection. This resulted in expensive downtime and costly damages to sensitive production equipment. An advanced microgrid can solve these power quality issues by stabilizing the frequency and voltage of the power supply.

A well-designed microgrid can do more than add generation capacity. With the right architecture, it can continuously condition incoming power, correct voltage and frequency irregularities, mitigate harmonics, improve power factor, and protect the equipment operating behind the meter.

 “A facility can have enough electricity and still have a power problem. The real question isn’t how much supply you have, but what that power is doing to your production equipment and the operational health of your business.”

3. Energy sovereignty means having the power you need, when you need it.

Businesses have traditionally accepted electricity as the utility delivers it. A microgrid changes that relationship by coordinating grid power, on-site generation, storage and other energy resources around the needs of the facility.

That choice is valuable because it gives businesses greater control over maintaining reliable, consistent power as grid conditions, energy markets and operating requirements change. It also reduces dependence on any single source of electricity.

“Energy sovereignty is not about abandoning the grid. It is about ensuring the business has reliable, consistent power and the ability to decide how and when that power is delivered. Companies should not have to wait for the grid to catch up before they can grow or protect their operations.”

4. Backup generators wait. Resilience learns, adapts and acts.

A modern microgrid can continuously monitor grid conditions, facility loads and on-site energy resources. Intelligent controls learn from operating patterns, anticipate changing conditions and respond in milliseconds, often before a disturbance becomes a larger disruption. The system can adjust how power is produced, managed and delivered as conditions change.

“Resilience used to mean having a generator waiting for an outage. Today, it means having an intelligent system that is always learning and adapting. It should understand the operation, recognize changing conditions and make decisions in real time. Resilience is no longer something you turn on after the power goes out. It’s something you actively manage every day.”

5. A microgrid can turn power infrastructure from a cost center into an asset.

For microgrid customers, on-site power delivers value beyond resilience. When generation, storage and load can be actively managed, facilities may be able to optimize when they use grid versus on-site power, reduce exposure to peak energy costs and, where market structures allow, participate in programs that create new revenue opportunities. At the same time, reducing load during constrained periods can help relieve pressure on the broader grid.

“Businesses have traditionally thought about power infrastructure as something they have to pay for. A microgrid empowers the customer and creates the opportunity to generate revenue over time. If you can control when you use the grid, when you use your own resources and when you reduce your load, you can make energy decisions based on both operational needs and economics. In the right markets, that flexibility can even create new earning opportunities while helping reduce strain on the grid. Advanced microgrids like the R3Di® system are more efficient for all stakeholders, focused on flexibility and reliability for the end-user.”

Mark Feasel, with Mission Critical Group

“While I’ve always included “access” (in addition to cost, resilience, and sustainability) when describing the value drivers of a microgrid, admittedly, I was focusing on the developing world.  However, there is no question today that the biggest driver for distributed onsite generation in the US is indeed “access”. Can I get the power I need, where I need it, and when I need it?

As unprecedented demand from large-scale loads like data centers, advanced manufacturing and other energy-intensive facilities put more pressure on the grid, customers can no longer assume that utility capacity will be available on the timeline or at the scale they need.  Interconnection timelines and equipment lead times can stretch for years, creating a mismatch between when a customer needs power and when the grid can provide it.

In many ways we’ve come full circle. The first electricity systems in the US were microgrids before the build out of the bulk power grid relegated them to resilience duty. Digitalization brought them back into play to do the hard part of integrating intermittent and flexible resources for cost savings and improved sustainability for savvy consumers and now we again enter a time when the bulk power grid cannot meet the needs of the moment.

Here are the five reasons I think are becoming most important:

1. You cannot build your business faster than you can get power

●       Access to the electric power grid is becoming oceanfront property. In many markets, the biggest constraint on growth is no longer whether a company wants to expand, but whether there is enough grid capacity to support that expansion and how long it will take to get it.

On-site generation gives customers another path to power. Instead of waiting entirely for new utility infrastructure or an expanded interconnection, they can bring generation closer to the load and make better use of the grid connection they already have.

The broader point is that time to power is becoming a business issue, not just an engineering issue. If a company has the customers, capital and plans to expand but cannot get enough electricity to the site, power becomes the constraint on the entire business.

2. Resilience should be designed around the consequences of an outage, not just the probability of one.

●       We often use reliability and resilience interchangeably, but they are different: reliability is about how often a system fails; resilience is about how well and how quickly you can respond when something goes wrong.

A hospital, semiconductor facility, data center and manufacturing plant may all experience the same grid outage, but the consequences are dramatically different. Customers should not pay for resilience they do not need, but they also cannot afford to discover during an outage that they did not build enough of it.

A microgrid gives customers more control over that equation. It allows them to build in the redundancy, islanding capability and generation they actually need rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all approach.

3. Customers are getting more choice over where their power comes from

●       We are entering an era where customers have more choices about how they produce, store and consume electricity. A microgrid provides the flexibility to combine grid power with natural gas generation, solar, wind, batteries, UPS systems and other technologies depending on what the customer values most.

AI, EV fleets, robotics, cold storage and advanced manufacturing are all pushing power requirements beyond what many facilities were originally designed to support. There is no single ideal energy mix. Customer priorities may vary: some focus on cost, others on availability, sustainability, or resilience.

The advantage of a microgrid is that it enables the customer to make those choices and adjust as their needs change. That is a significant shift from the traditional model of simply taking whatever power the grid provides.

4. On-site power has to be treated as prime infrastructure, not just backup equipment

●       A prime power system cannot simply be a backup power system scaled up. As more companies look at on-site generation to supplement or, in some cases, provide their primary power, we need to change how we think about these systems.

 If a business is going to depend on on-site power around the clock, the system has to be designed like a power plant. That means engineering for redundancy, maintainability, controls and serviceability from the beginning. You need to be able to take equipment offline for maintenance without taking the entire operation down.

This is where a microgrid becomes more than a collection of generators and batteries. Instead, it becomes an integrated energy system that cannot risk downtime because it must operate as part of the business.

5. Customers need a way to scale their power without overbuilding today.

●       Energy demand is changing too quickly for customers to confidently build a system today based on what they think they will need years from now. Overbuilding can leave you with stranded capacity, while underbuilding can create another constraint.

A modular approach to on-site power allows customers to add capacity as demand develops rather than making one enormous bet up front. It can reduce the risk of both overbuilding and underbuilding, particularly when demand is changing as quickly as it is today.

That flexibility also matters as the broader grid continues to evolve. If a major new load can meet some of its incremental demand through on-site generation, it reduces the amount of additional capacity it needs to pull from an already constrained system. But that comes with a responsibility: customers will increasingly have to consider emissions, noise, land use and other community impacts.

Being a good neighbor is becoming part of the power strategy.

Ultimately, I think the biggest change is that microgrids are moving from being an insurance policy to being part of the core power strategy. Customers are no longer asking only, “What happens if the grid goes down?” They are asking, “How do I make sure I have enough power to grow my business in the first place?”

PowerSecure’s Trew Woodley, Darrin Simon and Todd Jackson

From my perspective, the real value of a microgrid comes down to three things: resilience, cost control, and sustainability. For mission-critical commercial and industrial operations, even a brief power outage can create significant financial and operational risk, so having the ability to maintain power through on-site generation is essential. At the same time, a well-designed microgrid helps facilities better manage energy costs by reducing peak demand charges and participating in demand response programs. It also supports corporate sustainability goals by integrating renewable energy sources like solar and battery storage while maintaining the reliable, dispatchable power needed to keep operations running. Together, these benefits make a microgrid a strategic investment that improves reliability, strengthens financial performance, and advances ESG objectives.

-Trew Woodley, Sales Executive  

1. As utilities across the country confront growing capacity constraints and grid modernization challenges, microgrids provide commercial and industrial customers with enhanced flexibility, greater energy independence, and improved control over their power infrastructure in an increasingly dynamic energy environment.
2. A well-designed microgrid that integrates a strategic blend of distributed energy resources can lower energy costs, improve budget predictability, and help shield customers from future utility rate increases and energy market volatility.
3. In addition to supporting grid stability and strengthening utility systems, grid-interactive microgrids enable critical operations to remain online during utility disruptions, delivering clean, reliable, and resilient power when it is needed most.

 Darrin Simon, National Business Development Manager

 When we talk about power, we often associate it with “keeping the lights on.” However, you need to think about everything that gets turned “on,” or needs to stay on in your facility. Then think about everything downstream that would be impacted if it didn’t turn on, or if it didn’t have full power, or it lost power quickly. You realize quickly it’s a lot more than lights. For commercial and industrial organizations, energy has become a strategic business issue. The challenge is no longer simply keeping the lights on. It is ensuring that power availability supports growth, protects revenue, and strengthens competitiveness. While companies can choose to rely solely on the utility grid or deploy standalone generators, solar or battery systems, a microgrid delivers advantages none of those alternatives can provide on their own.

 First is resilience.
  For years, resilience meant putting in a backup generator and making sure the lights stayed on for a few critical loads. Today, customers are thinking bigger than that. They want to keep facilities running, protect operations, and avoid the disruptions that come with outages. A microgrid brings generation, storage, and controls together so you're not just reacting when something happens. You have options. You have flexibility. And you have a much better chance of keeping business moving.

 Second is speed to power, which really means speed to revenue.
  We're seeing it all over the country. Customers are ready to expand, but utility capacity isn't always available when they need it. Interconnection timelines can stretch out for months or even years. The reality is that waiting on power often means waiting on production, hiring, and revenue. A microgrid can help bridge that gap by providing capacity on-site, allowing projects to move forward while the grid infrastructure catches up.

 Third is economics.

Energy for larger C&I customers can have a lot of factors to consider, such as demand charges, time-of-use rates, capacity constraints, peak pricing events, and increasingly volatile energy markets. A generator, a battery, or a solar system by itself can address pieces of that challenge, but a microgrid allows those assets to work together as a coordinated system.

What that means is customers can be far more strategic about when they consume energy from the grid, when they generate their own power, and when they use stored energy. They can reduce exposure to high-cost periods and create more value from the assets already on-site.

Fourth is sustainability without giving up reliability.
 Some customers are looking to meet sustainability targets or meet certain emission criteria. At the same time, they can't afford downtime or the intermittency concerns with some sustainable options. That's where a microgrid can really help. Depending on the system, a hybrid microgrid can integrate solar, battery storage, and lower-carbon fuels or technologies while still maintaining the level of reliability their operations require.

 And finally, control.
 At the end of the day, that's what a lot of customers are looking for. With traditional utility service, there are a lot of factors outside of your control, whether that's outages, capacity constraints, market conditions, or infrastructure timelines. A microgrid gives customers more visibility and more flexibility in how they manage their energy. As business needs change, the energy strategy can change with them.

In a single quote: A microgrid helps customers gain resilience, get power when they need it, make better use of their energy assets, meet business goals, and ultimately have more control over their future.

●       Todd Jackson, VP Corporate Development

 Ryan Zimmerman of Schneider Electric

“For many commercial and industrial organizations, the energy conversation is changing. Resilience still matters, but so do time to power, access to energy, operating control and the ability to grow.

 “As power availability becomes a greater business constraint, microgrids are moving beyond their traditional role as backup power. They can help organizations secure capacity sooner, manage energy more deliberately, support expansion and prepare for growing electrical demand. In that sense, a microgrid is not simply an energy system; it can be infrastructure for business continuity and growth.”

 1. Turn energy spending into a managed business asset

“For decades, most organizations have treated electricity as a fixed utility expense. A microgrid changes that relationship.

 “By coordinating solar, battery storage, distributed generation and flexible loads, customers can manage energy as a portfolio rather than simply buy power. Depending on the site, tariff structure and market, this approach can help reduce peak demand charges, shift consumption away from higher-cost periods, capture available program revenue and make better use of existing infrastructure. It also connects energy decisions more directly to operating schedules, expansion plans and business risk.”

 2. Gain faster access to power and keep growth plans moving

“For many businesses, the challenge is no longer demand for their products or services. It is getting enough power, soon enough, to support growth.

 “Manufacturers, healthcare organizations, data centers and other large energy users may find that adding capacity, supporting critical operations or bringing new energy-intensive workloads online depends on when power becomes available.

 “A microgrid does not replace the utility, but it can provide more options while utility upgrades or interconnection work move forward. Depending on the site and project, onsite generation, storage and controls can support critical loads, add capacity in phases and help keep expansion plans on track. Where grid timelines stretch for years, that flexibility can become a meaningful business advantage.”

 3. Take greater control of day-to-day energy operations

“Energy availability, reliability and cost can be difficult to predict, yet organizations still need to make confident operating and investment decisions.

 “A microgrid gives operators more influence over how power is generated, stored and prioritized across a facility. The real value comes from orchestrating the entire energy system, connecting generation, storage, electrical distribution and flexible loads around the needs of the business. That makes energy control a practical operating capability rather than an abstract benefit.”

 “With better visibility and control, organizations can align energy use with immediate operating needs and longer-term business plans.”

 4. Build a flexible foundation for electrification

“Many commercial and industrial facilities are planning for significantly higher electrical loads than they carried only a few years ago.

 “Electrification, EV charging, automation, AI-related infrastructure and sustainability goals are placing new demands on energy systems. The issue is not only how much power a facility will need, but whether that power can be available when the business needs it.

 “A microgrid provides a flexible framework for adding generation, storage, EV charging and other electrical loads in phases as needs evolve. Coordinating those resources around a longer-term energy plan can reduce repeated redesign work and help facilities expand in step with operational priorities.”

 5. Strengthen resilience and business continuity

“Resilience remains one of the most important reasons organizations invest in microgrids.

 “What has changed is the scope of the conversation. Customers are looking beyond traditional backup power to consider how quickly they can recover from disruptions, maintain critical operations and continue serving customers when grid conditions are uncertain.

 “Advanced microgrid controls can coordinate onsite resources during normal operations and outages. When utility power is disrupted, a system designed to do so can isolate from the grid, prioritize critical loads and balance available generation and storage. That provides a more deliberate continuity strategy than relying on backup equipment that operates independently.”

 What is the value of a microgrid in one thought?

“For years, the microgrid conversation centered on keeping the lights on. Now it is also about how microgrids are becoming strategic infrastructure that keep businesses moving.

 “The opportunity is not simply to generate more power onsite, but to orchestrate generation, storage, electrical distribution and loads as one flexible energy system, giving businesses greater control over how energy supports their operations and growth.”