by Paige Medley
The New York State Energy Research Development Authority (NYSERDA) is currently running NY Prize, a $40 million competition to incentivize communities throughout New York State to develop microgrids. Working with Smarter Grid Solutions, I had the opportunity to be a co-author of the Stage 1 Feasibility Study of the Red Hook Community Microgrid (RH-CMG). The Feasibility Study examined the costs and practicality of installing a community microgrid in Red Hook that would use PV Solar, Anaerobic Digestion, Battery Backup and Gas Generators to deliver emergency power backup in times of grid outage, and deliver clean reliable and locally-produced electricity to the grid in times of non-outage.
What is a Microgrid? First imagine a traditional electric grid as a long line of dominoes. Each domino represents the lines and wires that provide homes and businesses with electricity. The flick of one domino results in the total collapse of the entire line. However, if there are smaller separate clusters of dominos, (think of these as microgrids), which could either connect or disconnect from the long line of dominoes, one would, using the same metaphor, prevent fewer homes or businesses from losing electricity when there is grid failure at one point on the domino line. Microgrids enable more renewable energy or distributed generation (DG) resources to connect to the overall grid.