A Tale of Four Microgrids: On-Site Energy Decisions Making Sense Across Sectors
Key Highlights
- Microgrids are being adopted across various sectors to enhance energy resilience, cost management, and sustainability.
- Major projects like JFK Airport's $19 billion terminal demonstrate the scale and importance of on-site power solutions for critical infrastructure.
- Microgrids enable facilities such as animal shelters and wineries to operate continuously during grid outages, ensuring safety and business continuity.
Airports. Animal shelters. Wineries. Trucking depots.
All unique parts of this giant machine called the American economy, creating jobs and working toward societal good. And each sector is completely unique in its objectives, methods and logistical challenges.
What one factor unites the needs and concerns of air travel, municipal functions, good libations and cargo movement?
Energy. No matter how big the industry—such as U.S. airports hosting nearly 20 million flights a year, or how small, such as an animal shelter in eastern Maryland—the critical goal is energy reliability, resiliency and cost predictability.
At the Schneider Electric Innovation Summit North America in Las Vegas last week, representatives of four microgrid projects offered insights on the impetus and critical directives they sought in pursuing on-site power for their projects of such singular needs.
The microgrid session included leaders with Knight-Swift Transportation, Domaine Carneros winery, Montgomery County, Maryland government and John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport in New York. Some of these sites move millions of people or thousands of bottles and other cargo, while another might keep lost or abandoned animals safe.
Energy bonds them enough that each chooses microgrids as a solution. Why?
“A lot of it is about energy management,” said Michael Yambrach, who is chief of the Office of Energy and Sustainability for Montgomery County government in Maryland, where Schneider Electric and joint venture developers such as AlphaStruxure have assisted the county on several microgrid projects. “Anybody here think power is going to get cheaper?”
The easy answer is no, considering the aging grid and the predicted hundred or more GWs of new generation capacity which will be needed to meet future digital infrastructure demand. In the meantime, companies within most sectors still have sustainability goals and desire to achieve those while meeting bottom-line objectives.
Montgomery County has welcomed microgrids on multiple facilities, from the animal shelter to the mass transit stations which are shifting to fleet electrification. Across the country, Knight-Swift Transporation collaborated with Schneider Electric on electrifying a portion of its California fleet, delivering solar and battery storage microgrid infrastructure to power 20 DC fast chargers.
Cost per mile is a motivating factor, so the microgrids must be penciled out. The alternative is relying completely on the 20th century utility grid.
“Demand charges can eat your lunch,” said Glen Thomas, senior vice president for corporate real estate services at Knight-Swift Transportation. “We needed a behind-the-meter solution. I needed batteries that had to stay charged and a microgrid was the perfect solution.”
Cheers to that equation, says Remi Cohen who is CEO of boutique Napa Valley champagne and wine producer Domaine Carneros. The winery installed solar panels some years ago but wanted to unite all its distributed energy resources into a controlled solar-storage and backup microgrid which can deliver energy resiliency in a region known for weather events and utility-enforced public safety power shutoffs.
“We’re close to the end of the grid,” Cohen pointed out. “Energy resiliency means allowing continuous operations even during extended outages on the grid. We knew (installing the microgrid) would get us closer to energy independence.”
And the Domaine Carneros microgrid assets, installed and connected in the last year, already have proven their mettle. A regional power outage shut operations at multiple nearby wineries, but Domaine Carneros stayed open and even entertained guests from the neighboring facilities during one disruption.
“It was a day-long outage, but we stayed up and it didn’t disrupt our revenue stream,” Cohen added. “It was a no-brainer to choose the microgrid. . . Sustainability and efficiency of operations come together are not contradictory.”
The biggest microgrid of all those featured in the Innovation Summit session is not even close to completed yet, but it offers a future template for critical infrastructure on-site power going forward. The $19 billion JFK Airport Terminal One remake and microgrid, which partners AlphaStruxure with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is a massive project which, on the energy side, will exceed 12 MW of on-site power in solar, battery storage and eventually fuel-cell technology.
“We’re still in construction, with shovels going into the ground in 2022, and opening the first phase of 14 gates next year,” said Uzoamaka Okoye, chief of staff for The New Terminal One at JFK. “We’ve done an energy-as-a-service agreement (with AlphaStruxure, a joint venture of Schneider Electric and Carlyle). It’s more than 13,000 solar panels and will meet 15% of full load.
“It’s all about energy resiliency,” Okoye said. “When you’re talking about air transport that’s a major thing (being up when the grid is down) . . . We embedded sustainability into the entire design and construction.”
JFK New Terminal One is surely a massive microgrid achievement to come will offer a use case on the value proposition of microgrids, but important ones come in small packages, too.
Yambrach has overseen major microgrid work with Montgomery County’s mass transit and critical services, but one project which obviously is close to his heart is the power sustaining the local animal shelter.
“There was a plane crash which hit a transmission line and knocked out power for a day and half,” Yambrach recalled. “Our animal shelter was able to continue to operate. . . Things you don’t think about suddenly become very important to you.”
Clearly examples such as these show that’s where microgrids perform best, stepping up when the unexpected or even unthinkable happens.
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.