A US city tries a novel approach to microgrids

02/26/24 • 8 min

As cities around the U.S. ramp up their renewable energy goals, they’re sometimes at odds with the utilities that serve them. Some have tried to break away and form their own utilities. Others are creating community choice aggregators to negotiate clean power supply for residents.

The city of Ann Arbor is trying something different – building microgrid projects to serve local load without the help of the utility.

The effort could be costly, contentious, and complicated. But if it works, it could create a whole new model for local clean energy supply.

In this edition: Editor Lisa Martine Jenkins presents a story from the pages of Latitude Media on a microgrid project in Michigan that aims to bypass the local utility.

For more of Latitude Media’s coverage of the frontiers of clean energy, sign up for our newsletter.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The city of Ann Arbor is trying something different – building microgrid projects to serve local load without the help of the utility.

The effort could be costly, contentious, and complicated. But if it works, it could create a whole new model for local clean energy supply.

In this edition: Editor Lisa Martine Jenkins presents a story from the pages of Latitude Media on a microgrid project in Michigan that aims to bypass the local utility.

For more of Latitude Media’s coverage of the frontiers of clean energy, sign up for our newsletter.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Previous Episode

Under the hood of a novel virtual power plant

We have 60 gigawatts of virtual power plant capacity in the US. But that needs to triple in the next decade to support a zero-carbon grid – while also meeting a surge in peak demand.

There are lots of different models for building VPPs that link together solar, batteries, EV chargers, and smart thermostats. Sunrun and PG&E tested a model this summer that uses solar and batteries to create a “permanent load shift” to offset the evening peak in California.

It provided tens of megawatts of capacity to the utility. But there were also some issues with batteries not delivering the expected output. What do the results tell us what it will take to make VPPs a core piece of utility operations?

In this edition: Editor Lisa Martine Jenkins presents a story from the pages of Latitude Media on some surprising results from PG&E and Sunrun’s virtual power plant pilot.

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Next Episode

Data center experts on AI energy demand

Data center energy use is spiking around the world. The International Energy Agency says that demand could double in the next two years, as artificial intelligence workloads soar.

This increase in demand is alarming environmentalists and clean power advocates, who say AI is making decarbonization harder.

But many experts in the data center industry see it differently. They say data centers are actually an energy efficiency success story – and that the benefits of AI in the power sector will far outweigh the increase in data center demand.

In this edition: Editor Lisa Martine Jenkins presents a story from the pages of Latitude Media on the reactions from data center experts about the surge of energy demand from AI.

For more of Latitude Media’s coverage of the frontiers of clean energy, sign up for our newsletter.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices