Why Do We Keep Hearing About Microgrids?

By Gary Wetzel
02 July 2012   |  

 

Just under 10 years ago, I started hearing people mention the term “Smart Grid.” It mostly revolved around people talking about the installation and adoption of automated metering infrastructure and renewables. Over the years friends and colleagues would ask me, “Why do I keep hearing about the Smart Grid?,” and I would tell them about our increased reliance on electricity and the rolling blackouts in 2003 that caused the power industry to develop new standards and technology to help deliver safe, clean, and reliable electricity.

Well now people are asking me about microgrids and why they keep hearing about them. As Dan Girard wrote in an earlier blog post, the concept of microgrids isn’t new. What really has changed is the incorporation of wind, solar, storage and other distributed generation resources into an interconnected electrical grid. Putting distributed resources on an interconnected power system is a new concept and required experts in the field to provide standards on how best to do this in order to assure the reliability and stability of the electrical grid. Those experts came from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) who put together a standards committee to work on solving this complex problem