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This story is the second in an occasional series in which SNL Energy provides a detailed look at microgrids in North America. Future stories will provide profiles of particular projects, technologies and policies related to microgrids.
When wildfires tore through San Diego County in October 2007, San Diego Gas & Electric Co. sent out a desperate call to its large customers to lower consumption. The University of California, San Diego, not only eliminated the 4 MW it was drawing from the grid, it became a 3-MW exporter, all in the space of 10 minutes, said Byron Washom, the university's director of strategic energy initiatives.
In a single stroke, the university became an early exemplar of the resilience of microgrids, demonstrating how an organized group of buildings can island themselves and provide grid services while also keeping the lights on and the freezers cold.
Microgrids allow small groups of buildings to share enough generation or power storage to enable them to isolate themselves from the grid and keep power flowing in an emergency. The notion has been attracting a lot of attention in recent years, partly as a way to provide resiliency against big storms or other disasters that are testing local grids. Annual revenues from vendors for developing microgrids are expected to quadruple by 2020, according to Navigant Research.
At 42 MW of peak summer load and with 35 MW of its own generation, UC San Diego may be the largest microgrid in the country. Over the course of a year, the university provides 92% of its own energy, and, as it demonstrated in 2007, it can reduce its load...