Microgrids: Providing Energy Services Locally

Google Tech Talks March 25, 2009 ABSTRACT Two stylized alternative visions of how the power system might evolve to meet future requirements for the high power quality and reliability (PQR) electricity service that modern digital economies demand will be contrasted, a supergrids paradigm and a dispersed paradigm. Some of the economics of the dispersed vision are explored, and perspectives are presented on both the choice of homogeneous universal power quality up-stream in the electricity supply chain and on the extremely heterogeneous requirements of end-use loads. The characteristics of one microgrid paradigm for providing heterogeneous PQR, the CERTS Microgrid, will be described. Microgrid demonstrations in the U.S. and Japan will be highlighted. Finally, analysis of the economics of possible microgrid installations in California and New York states will be explained using some example buildings, including data centers Speaker: Chris Marnay Chris Marnay is Staff Scientist and Leader of the Technology Evaluation, Modeling, and Assessment Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He has worked or 25 years at Berkeley Lab, and he also assists the UC San Diegos Vice Chancellor of Business Affairs with campus sustainability implementation. For almost a decade, he has led development of the DER Customer Adoption Model (DER-CAM) that finds optimal combinations of on-site generation and other equipment to meet useful energy service requirements. These methods are currently being incorporated into the SAP enterprise software suite, and being used for other building and community analyses in several countries. Chris is a member of the Consortium of Electric Reliability Solutions (CERTS) group that proposed the CERTS Microgrid concept, which will soon be demonstrated at the headquarters building of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. Chris also chairs an annual international symposium on microgrids, the most recent of which was held on Kythnos Is., Greece. He has an A.B. in Development Studies, an M.S. in Agricultural and Resource Economics, and a Ph.D. in Energy and Resources, all from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2006, he was a visiting professor at the University of Kitakyushu, Japan. http://eetd.lbl.gov/ea/EMS/staff/Marnay.html