Page 48 - REALCOMM EDGE-Fall 2017-FINAL

SPOTLIGHT: ENERGY STORAGE

Building Power Plants – Property Owners

Begin to Embrace Microgrid Strategies

Adam Maher
Senior Vice President
CleanSpark

t’s energy storage’s moment to shine. Battery technology has A corporate campus, REIT, shopping center or other commer-
come of age and is addressing the intermittency challenges cial/industrial property concern that wants to invest in its own
Ithat have held back wind and solar deployments for years. power-plant capabilities should take a technology-agnostic
Some utilities have invested in large-scale storage systems to approach to finding the best mix of clean, renewable energy
deliver flexible capacity at peak times. Here, energy storage is sources and energy management software. The microgrid must
poised to eclipse any need for firing up old, inefficient peaking be designed around your unique buildings, your business, your
power plants. load profile, and the way utilities
But eclipses can also be blinding. operate in your part of the country.
Many in the market seem to be Achieving the best microgrid
missing the whole picture when configuration and the fastest
strategizing about how to profit investment payback starts by
from the energy transformation in picking the right grid develop-
process right now. There is a trend to ment partner, a partner who can
put one energy resource behind one guide you through production
meter and call the job done. Solar options: solar, wind, diesel, etc.
plus battery storage is a powerful The project team should objec-
combination, and free energy should tively evaluate the optimal mix of
be a component in your microgrid distributed energy resources and
strategy. But only when free energy financially model long-term per-
is combined with a controls strat- “…only when free energy is combined formance, considering financing
egy—that also makes the most of with a controls strategy–that also makes options, state and local programs,
software analytics and your existing recurring maintenance costs and
utility relationship—will you be able the most of software analytics and your performance degradation. Astute
to maximize financial returns. existing utility relationship–will you be evaluation of all these factors is
There is so much potential power able to maximize financial returns.” key to making the right decisions.
and savings not realized when you The prospect of doing such thor-
enter a long-term contract with a single vendor—when you ough pre-planning may seem daunting, but it is no reason to
don’t have a bigger future energy ownership plan. Consider retreat to ‘one resource behind one meter’—i.e. just solar or just
the approach taken by Google (Alphabet), Apple, Microsoft, batteries. Bulk application of a partial solution is never a formula
Amazon and Facebook as they pursue the goal of using 100% for success, much less so in a market as complex as the commer-
clean energy. They are not only microgrid operators, some are cial/retail world.
forming energy subsidiaries inside their companies. Driven by When you have the right tools and experience, doing such
their charter to defend the country, military microgrid operators evaluations can be a straightforward exercise. At CleanSpark,
are even farther ahead in terms of orchestrating their multiple we start our microgrid design and engineering projects by
clean-energy power plants with projects like the FractalGrid at hacking the existing utility bill, finding all the ways to attack
Camp Pendleton. Both big-data and military campuses have energy costs and to beat the utility at its own game of rate
dynamic, upper-hand relationships with local utilities. They are structures and energy supply and demand. We were early to
changing the energy landscape for other microgrid operators, the microgrid market after years of working behind the scenes
but you need to be in that class to be positioned to make sim- on military microgrids. Software evaluates thousands of scenari-
ilar energy cost management, sustainability, predictability and os and algorithmically models the best payback so the custom-
resiliency gains. er understands what they should build—i.e., what distributed

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