Four years ago the electric utilities were roiled by predictions they would collapse before an onslaught of solar panels and windmills and batteries at homes and businesses that wouldn’t need utilities anymore.
They pulled themselves together by rallying around the idea that they were uniquely positioned to reinvent themselves as energy-services providers: they have the equipment, the expertise, the personnel, all the convenient connections of the existing grid to serve as exchange networks for all those individual “prosumers.”
But there are signs afoot that microgrids are developing without those utility services, and investors seeking clean-energy opportunities may be pouring money into the new alternatives.
“When you have a microgrid conversation, the people who come to the table aren’t even the utilities,” said Ed Krapels of Anbaric Development Partners, a Boston-based developer of microgrids. “It’s typically the technology companies like Google, like Amazon, that have a completely different idea of how to digitally control an energy system than the utilities have. So it really is the beginning of an enormous change in how the electric system is organized, and it’s a real problem for the utilities that don’t get on board.”
Originally a developer of interstate transmission lines, Anbaric broadened to microgrids because of a convergence of technological forces: distributed generation of solar and wind, cheaper batteries and blockchain cryptocurrencies that allow microgrid participants to buy and sell electricity faster and cheaper than they can through utilities.
Anbaric’s major investor is the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan.
“They own airports and roads and all kinds of infrastructure,” Krapels said. “They would like to be your electricity supplier. And that competition between sources of capital means that the monopoly position of the utilities is coming to an end, and we’re going to have a much more competitive and much more disruptive market.”
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