Page 44 - Energize March 2022

VIEWS AND OPINION

What can bees teach us about electric reliability?

If your power is out, especially for days, the arrival of a mobile microgrid in your community is a

welcome sight. But mobile microgrids are rare. Most of us have to tough out a power outage,
sometimes for days, weeks or months. How can we multiply them? Think bees.

BY ELISA WOOD, MICROGRID KNOWLEDGE

partnership between two heavy hitters — swarming out to serve communities. Like bees, when the job is done, the
Microsoft and Schneider Electric — is working microgrids return to a hive where more work is to be done, Schneider Electric’s
A with the non-profit organisation Footprint Mark Feasel says.
Project on a way to multiply the number of mobile The hive might be a fire station, a school, a bus depot or some other entity
microgrids that can quickly respond to disasters. that the microgrid can serve in another way. Some of these sites have installed
And while their solution requires some sophisticated on-site energy, such as solar panels. Add a microgrid to that and now the “hive”
software, and an understanding of ancillary power can benefit economically by providing services to the grid.
markets, the concept is pretty straightforward. “We’ll go to a place that has some permanent solar installed. Maybe that’s
a fire station, maybe it’s even a grid-scale solar application, and we’ll park the
Think of a beehive trailers there. And, at that site, we’ll have them connected to the grid,” says
Why a beehive? Feasel, Schneider Electric’s president of Smart Grid North America.
First, consider the problem. Mobile microgrids arrive Then when there is another disaster, the mobile microgrids disconnect and
in communities following a disaster to provide power head out to provide electricity for those who need it.
for things it’s hard to live without – refrigeration for
medications and food, cell phone charging, light and Multiplying mobile microgrids
heat in winter and air conditioning in summer. At the hive, connected to a permanent solar installation, the microgrid’s battery
Their job is important but only temporary. The can help smooth the installation’s sometimes dramatic fluctuations in energy
rest of the time a mobile microgrid has nothing to do. production. Markets exist for this service, so the mobile microgrid could generate
That makes it an expensive investment. income to help defray its costs.
People sometimes question why utilities do The concept is well-suited to Footprint Project’s mobile microgrids — trailers
not use more mobile microgrids during disasters, outfitted with solar panels and batteries. The small non-profit organisation,
particularly those that use solar and energy storage. which monitors disasters throughout the US and responds where it can, has
The cost-to-use ratio may help answer that question. gained increasing support from industry players, including Schneider Electric and
But what if the mobile microgrids could be put Microsoft, which are bringing Schneider Electric’s remote monitoring technology
to use when there is no disaster? That’s what the and Microsoft’s cloud-based software to the effort.
partnership is working on. “The first Footprint microgrids didn’t have remote monitoring. They had a
Picture a storm, which sends mobile microgrids person on-site at all times. At some point that’s not scalable,” Feasel says.

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