Page 45 - Energize March 2022

VIEWS AND OPINION

Like others sending volunteers and equipment to provide sustainability benefits and avoid problems sometimes associated with
Footprint, Schneider Electric and Microsoft hope to diesel during disasters, such as delivery delays and supply shortages. Diesel also
significantly increase Footprint’s fleet and its abilities. faces some prohibitions to participating in grid markets because of its emissions
When the organisation first responded to Hurricane profile, so it wouldn’t be a good option for the beehive model that Footprint,
Ida in Louisiana last autumn, the need for emergency Microsoft and Schneider Electric are pursuing, Feasel says.
power vastly outweighed the capabilities of its three The partners are still working out the details, but as Feasel sees it, the
mobile microgrids. beehive concept offers a significant opportunity to create a business model that
Will Heegaard, Footprint’s operations director, put makes more mobile microgrids available and ready to dispatch from “the hive”
out a plea for help and more than 50 companies and following grid-crippling hurricanes, snowstorms, heat waves and wildfires.
organisations responded, building Footprint’s fleet to
where it was able to create 20 “community resilience What areas of the country might be most suited to the model?
sites” — electrified havens at places like fire stations, Feasel points out that extreme weather doesn’t necessarily conform to
medical clinics and volunteer camps. Those who lived expectations. Last winter’s deep freeze in Texas offers a good example.
nearby could tap into the resilience sites for charging “I think any responsible municipality could think about leveraging this kind of
and services. approach to provide better services to their community, especially the vulnerable
part of the community,” Feasel says. “If you look at where deaths occur after
Decarbonising disaster response power outages, it often is not the super high-income areas in town with backup
Footprint’s larger mission is to “decarbonise disaster generators. It’s people that don’t have those luxuries and have got to find other
response”, i.e., replace commonly used diesel ways to get by. We always think about that.”
generators with renewable microgrids.
Because its microgrids use solar and storage, they This article was first published by Microgrid Knowledge

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