Dive Brief:
- Microgrids can provide more than backup power, additionally using their distributed energy resources to help utilities manage peak events and voltage issues during normal grid operations, Jackie Baum, senior team lead for DER Integration at the Electric Power Research Institute, told an audience at the Building an Advanced Energy Ecosystem Conference in Albuquerque last week.
- Data centers with loads above 50 MW are driving an increase in the typical size of microgrids, Baum said, with some projects large enough to require a transmission connection. Baum told Utility Dive that the resources supporting those sites could help smooth their power consumption.
- Making microgrids part of the everyday power system will require utilities and vendors to stop treating each project as a custom one-off. The longer-term shift could be toward microgrids and DERs becoming trusted components of distribution operations, supported by repeatable systems and planning tools that utilities can confidently plug into routine grid operations and use to support large loads, experts at the BAEE conference said.
Dive Insight:
Baum described DERs as resources typically operating below 69 kV, including behind‑the‑meter solar and storage, as well as utility‑owned or operator‑owned generation sited locally.
She cited the U.S. Department of Energy’s technical term for a microgrid, which has “clearly defined electrical boundaries” and acts as a single controllable entity, either connected to or islanded from the larger grid — a distinction that becomes increasingly important as microgrids expand into larger, more complex applications.
The challenge, Baum said, is making microgrids predictable enough for utilities to rely on, including when resources will be available and how they will affect the broader system.
Jon Hawkins, associate director of grid modernization at Public Service Co. of New Mexico, or PNM, described how the utility is trying to fit microgrids into a framework built around uniformity.
“If you’ve seen one microgrid, you’ve seen one microgrid,” Hawkins said, noting that every project comes with a different mix of loads, generation and controls and that, unlike solar or storage, “we don’t have those same standardizations in the microgrid world yet, so while [PNM] supports it, it’s also a longer, more involved process as we get people to try to interconnect to the grid.”
To move from pilots to product-like systems, Sandia National Laboratories is building four scenario-based grid engineering facilities to test power electronics, controls, storage and inverters before they are deployed in the field.
Stan Atcitty, senior scientist and power electronics lead at Sandia, said that as the labs come online researchers plan to “slam” commercial equipment with faults, cyberattacks and stressed operating conditions so utilities and developers can rely on trusted models and hardened designs, a step panelists said is essential to make microgrids less risky.
PNM, as New Mexico’s balancing authority, has about 40 MW of leeway under its balancing requirements, while some proposed data centers could reach 300 MW, making sudden changes in net load a potential frequency and stability concern, according to Hawkins.
“EPRI is [also] working on these areas through [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] standards development, running collaborative industry forums to identify ongoing challenges in the field and collect best practices, and publishing those effective strategies and methodologies for modeling, testing and commissioning microgrids,” Baum told Utility Dive.
Project economics increasingly hinge on how much value microgrids can provide beyond backup. Panelists cited value stacking, using DERs for backup and everyday grid services, and state interconnection policies as drivers of lower net costs.
Kit Carson Electric Cooperative CEO Luis Reyes said his rural co-op is working on five microgrids, including battery-based systems and a clean hydrogen project. He pointed to a seven-day natural gas outage in 2011 that left communities in New Mexico without service during a severe cold snap.
Reyes told attendees residents believed the region had been “sacrificed” to keep gas flowing for the Super Bowl in Dallas, though a subsequent New Mexico Public Regulation Commission investigation attributed the emergency to rolling electrical blackouts and frozen equipment rather than intentional curtailment for the event.
The experience underscored the value of local energy resources for the co-op. “As you start looking at how we maintain or keep our quality of life … [it] is by localized infrastructure,” Reyes said.
