Ohio's Cuyahoga County Edges Closer to Community Microgrid Utility Reality
It’s still early days on what already feels like a long road, but the movement to create a multi-customer microgrid utility for Cuyahoga County, Ohio, moved a huge step forward earlier this month.
County officials voted early-stage and unanimous approval to release more than $10 million in grant funding to support development of a long-planned microgrid that would provide on-site power for an industrial corridor in the Euclid area east of Cleveland. The project, developed by municipal utility Cuyahoga Green Energy and its partner, Compass Energy Platform, has already been approved by the city of Euclid.
Cuyahoga County includes Cleveland, Berea, Parma, Brooklyn Heights and Euclid, among others. It is a primarily urban county along the Lake Erie shoreline.
The microgrid utility was originally envisioned to deal with energy resiliency issues for both communities and businesses. In 2023, the Cuyahoga County Council approved a 10-year contract with Compass Energy Platform as the utility partner to develop the initial projects.
The grant funds from both the federal Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency will help support development of the multi-resource microgrid, designed to serve a combination of industrial customers in Euclid, including Elmet, Hose Master, PPG Industries and multiple Lincoln Electric sites.
"The need for more sustainable and resilient power has unlocked tremendous innovation in the energy industry, and it is terrific to see the Cuyahoga County Council in tune with this innovation, leading by example. The Euclid microgrid project is ground-breaking, as is the new utility itself,” Rick Bolton, CEO of Compass Energy Platform, in response to a query from Microgrid Knowledge.
“Every aspect offers something new, something never done before,” Bolton added. “Compass is excited to be moving forward as the project developer, and as the county’s utility partner, as we work together for the benefit of local businesses and workers. We believe this project will provide new options for northeast Ohio’s manufacturing economy."
Cuyahoga County and Compass hope to start physical construction by later next year and put the Euclid microgrid into commercial operation by the fourth quarter of 2027. The plan calls for the microgrid to be 95% comprised of renewable energy assets and should be able to island from the main grid during regional transmission outages.
Project developers have completed conceptual engineering work and letters of intent have been signed with projected industrial customers. Equipment procurement has not yet taken place, although some solar technologies are being purchased with the aim of generating power for local use while the microgrid is being constructed.
Eventually, Cuyahoga County Green Energy hopes to extend the microgrid beyond industrial customers to other mission critical facilities such as schools, grocery stores and public safety sites such as the fire and police departments.
“With the help of a utility operator like Compass and great consultants like Go Sustainable Energy and Cleveland State’s Energy Policy Center as well as wonderful support from (then) U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, our hope is that we will be a national leader in the coming decades in creating resilient and clean energy microgrid districts,” County Sustainability Director Mike Foley said when the county selected Compass to move forward on development in 2023.
Sen. Brown, an Ohio Democrat who is no longer in office, previously aided Cuyahoga County in gaining DOE grant funding. Additional companies, beyond Compass, which have expressed support for the Cuyahoga County microgrid concepts include energy transition technology firms and developers such as Ameresco, Eaton, Enchanted Rock, Mesa Solutions, PowerSecure, S&C Electric and Schneider Electric.
Compass and Cuyahoga County also have contracted Burns Engineering on the microgrid project. In September, Bolton and Foley will be joined by David Smith of Burns Engineering to present a session on the "microgrid utility" at T&D World Live happening September 23-25 at the Renaissance Phoenix-Glendale in Arizona.
About the Author
Rod Walton, Microgrid Knowledge 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.