Energy for the People: Microgrids and the Democratization of Energy

on November 13, 2020

The US has made significant efforts towards modernizing its electrical grid, yet the existing disparity in power quality and electricity savings achieved among communities and individual consumers demonstrates we still have ways to go. When microgrids were first introduced, they offered a viable technology solution to help consumers upgrade their energy infrastructure. With their ability to integrate cleaner resources into our power mix, mitigate costs and increase reliability, microgrids transformed the way we consumed our electricity.

Although microgrids have been around for quite some time, it wasn’t until recent years that we saw adoption quickly spread among municipalities, large commercial buildings, campuses and critical facilities. As we experienced first-hand the resilience and sustainability benefits microgrids offer, especially in the face of severe weather and prolonged blackouts, the more cities and businesses considered the technology as part of their energy infrastructure strategy.

Fast forward to today, technological advancements and the maturation of innovative business models, such as Energy-as-a-Service (EaaS), have further enabled the growth of microgrids. As a model that presented a way to invest in microgrids with little to no upfront capital expense and minimal risk, EaaS was the solution for addressing the biggest financial barrier to deployment and a key driver to the uptick in microgrid adoption.

Microgrids are a viable solution for all organizations seeking to gain control over their energy costs, advance sustainability, and increase resilience, and it’s up to the industry as a whole to help make them accessible to everyone.

Still, the primary customer for microgrids widely remains municipal, district, institutional, commercial campus and large buildings. While we’ve experienced many technological breakthroughs in the last decade to reach more advanced and smarter microgrids, it’ll be the ongoing economic breakthroughs that will enable us to reach mass adoption and transform the power grid as we know it.

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Fractal Energy Storage ConsultantsEnergy for the People: Microgrids and the Democratization of Energy