Bayfield County in northern Wisconsin was recently honored by RENEW Wisconsin’s 2023 Clean Energy Honor Roll for commissioning the area’s first multi-building microgrid at their Courthouse and Jail. One of 13 recently commissioned clean energy projects recognized in Wisconsin, this innovative distributed energy system integrates solar PV, battery energy storage, and backup diesel generation to provide critical power in the event of a grid outage. By combining the buildings into one microgrid, the County was also able to decommission an aging diesel generator. In addition, the County will commission another microgrid at their Washburn Garage later this year.

muGrid Analytics will serve as Lead Program Manager for the Wisconsin Office of Sustainability and Clean Energy’s (OSCE) Resilience and Prosperity in Rural Northern Wisconsin program, which has been selected for award negotiation for the Energy Improvement in Rural or Remote Areas Funding Opportunity provided by the U.S. Department of Energy. The program is one of 17 projects chosen for

Bayfield County Commissions Area’s First Multi-Building Microgrid with Redcloud EMS.

muGrid’s Redcloud EMS uses predictive analytics to actively manage the operation of the battery. Redcloud is expected to reduce the County’s utility demand and energy costs by charging the battery when energy rates are low and discharging during periods when demand is high or when solar is producing less due to clouds or snow cover. muGrid Analytics is delivering resilient backup power and utility cost savings to critical infrastructure in upper Wisconsin.

muGrid Analytics has been awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science to support continued development of their Redcloud Energy Management System (EMS). The Redcloud EMS provides operational model predicted command-and-control for battery energy storage, electric vehicle chargers, and other dispatchable loads to drive near-optimal utility bill savings.

In partnership with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Resilient Power Working Group (RPWG), muGrid Analytics participated in detailing the resilience best practices in clean energy for a variety of critical facilities and sites.

In partnership with Eagle Point Solar, muGrid Analytics will bring solar plus storage to Dubuque’s terminal building.

Pandemic response and energy security are both emergency preparedness issues leading us toward a more distributed architecture.

A client recently asked the question, “How is COVID-19 going to affect the energy industry?”

Initially, it may not seem like a virus and energy resources are connected.

Are we afraid that the power is going to go out when we have a pandemic? No, not at first. Yet, the pandemic can affect the grid considerably since it changes the way people consume energy.

“Flattening the curve” is not a new concept. In fact, it’s something that we in the energy industry work on every single day.

Surely you are no stranger to the term “flatten the curve,” embedded in our lexicon by the current COVID-19 pandemic. Recently, I’ve been struck by the similarities between reducing the risk of spreading disease and what we at muGrid do every day: mitigating energy costs.

muGrid CTO Dr. Travis Simpkins will be speaking at the Critical Power Expo on Thursday, September 13, 2018 at 2 PM. His talk Optimizing Battery Sizing & Dispatching to Maximize the Economic Return of Grid-Connected Microgrids is part of the Critical Power Tech forum, and is free to attend.

The Critical Power Expo is part of The Battery Show conference running from September 11-13, 2018 at the Suburban Showcase in Novi, Michigan. It is one of the premier conferences for backup power, microgrids, and electric vehicles and drew over 5,000 attendees last year.

In anticipation of her presentation at the Distributed Energy Conference in October, “How to Incentivize Your Utility Customers to Do What You Want,” Amy Simpkins spoke to POWER Magazine‘s Aaron Larson on the POWER Podcast about the knobs that utilities can turn to find a win-win situation with their clients when it comes to behind-the-meter distributed energy resources.

We have been working with our partners Clean Energy Group and American Microgrid Solutions to analyze a variety of facilities for the potential to install resilient power. We recently participated in a CEG webinar where we discussed our real-world experience with these types of projects. So if you’ve already watched that webinar and are here to learn more, welcome!

CEG defines resilient power as follows:

Resilient power is the ability not only to provide critical power to essential facilities and services during a power outage, but also to provide economic benefits throughout the year, by reducing power bills and generating revenue through providing services to utilities and grid operators.

On a recent trip I ended up renting a flex fuel vehicle at the airport. Over the course of the trip I had the opportunity to think through the economics of integrating flex fuel vehicles into a consumer rental car fleet like Hertz, Avis, or National. I wrote about my experience in a post over at the travel blog One Mile at a Time where I’m a semi-frequent contributor. Here’s an excerpt:

As part of the Reforming the Energy Vision (REV), the state of New York is in the process of transitioning away from simple net energy metering to a scheme which compensates distributed energy resources (DER) based on when and where the energy is generated. That means that a kWh of electricity generated at 5 PM is worth more than one generated at 9 AM, for example, and one generated in a congested part of the city is worth more than say upstate. The new system, formally called the Value of Distributed Energy Resources (VDER), takes all of that into consideration when determining the monetary value of solar exports.

Dr. Simpkins will be presenting at the Boulder chapter of the Colorado Renewable Energy Society on June 13, 2018, at 6:30 PM. The topic of the talk will be Optimizing Battery Sizing and Dispatching To Maximize Economic Return.

If you’re interested in power resiliency, you’ll want to check out this upcoming Clean Energy Group webinar featuring muGrid Analytics’ own Dr. Travis Simpkins along with our partner Geoff Oxnam of American Microgrid Solutions talking real projects, real economics, and real tradeoffs.

The thing is, the new energy industry is not yet in the algorithm stage of maturity. This feels silly, because the traditional energy industry is old and seen as an area lacking in innovation. But here we are on the cusp of seeing our entire energy infrastructure undergo a total butterfly-like transformation, and innovation is at the core of that transformation. Everything old is new again, and we as an industry find ourselves back at the Mystery and Heuristic stages of technology development.

The new energy industry is just not ready for full automation of the feasibility, design, and operational processes. It is coming. We will get there. Some energy applications (solar) are more advanced along the path of maturity than others (energy storage, energy trading). But for now, you should absolutely want to have a human in the loop while designing and deploying energy systems.

Here are five reasons you should always want human eyes on whatever analysis you commission to design, build, and operate systems of DERs:

muGrid Analytics will be at ASES Solar 2017, The National Solar Conference, from October 9-13, 2017. The National Solar Conference is coming to muGrid’s hometown, Denver, Colorado. We will be presenting some of our recent work with Host Hotels and Resorts at the poster session on Tuesday afternoon. Amy Simpkins, muGrid’s Director of Business Development, will staff the poster session, so please stop by and say hi.

muGrid Analytics will be at Solar Power International from September 10-13, 2017. SPI is the largest solar trade show in North America and is being held at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. We will be presenting some of our recent work with AvalonBay Communities and Host Hotels and Resorts at the poster session on Monday evening. Amy Simpkins, muGrid’s Director of Business Development, will staff the poster session, so please stop by and say hi.

muGrid Analytics will be at the Critical Power Expo from September 12-14, 2017 in Novi, Michigan. Dr. Travis Simpkins will be speaking on Optimal Sizing and Dispatching of Microgrid Components to Maximize Economic Gain and Increase Resiliency. This talk is part of a panel on Evaluating the Microgrid Market and Its Potential as a Critical Power System Solution for Increased Resiliency that is scheduled for 2 PM on Tuesday afternoon.

Here at muGrid Analytics, we love to help clients make data-driven decisions regarding their energy assets. We use our Redcloud energy optimization platform every day to determine the optimal sizing and dispatching of battery energy storage across stacked revenue streams. Other times we’ve used big data techniques to identify, in near real-time, which inverter has failed on a solar array, ensuring that the system continued to perform to produce electricity at peak capacity.

But there’s often one small problem — we need data! Without data, we’re kind of useless.