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.

muGrid Analytics is pleased to announce that we have been selected as a featured technical consultant for the Solar in Your Community Challenge sponsored by the Department of Energy. This $5M nationwide competition is aimed at expanding solar to low and moderate income (LMI) households; state, local, and tribal governments; and non-profit organizations, all of which have been underserved in the rapidly developing solar market.

Stationary batteries can make or save money in a variety of ways.

They can be used to directly reduce your utility bill by performing demand charge management (also called peak shaving) and to energy arbitrage. Or they can generate revenue in the form of cash payments for providing demand response, frequency regulation, or other ancillary services to the grid. Depending on the location, batteries may also enable utilities to defer the upgrades of their substations and other distribution equipment, which can have significant value which they may partially pass on to you. And of course, the most traditional use of a battery is to provide backup power during times that the grid goes down, which can have real value, even if no money is transacted.

The term microgrid can have a lot of different meanings so I thought it might be good to explain how we use it here at muGrid, especially given that, you know, it’s in our name.

When we say microgrid, we’re generally referring to a collection of distributed energy resources that can be operated in isolation from the main electrical grid. Maybe they operate in isolation all the time like if you live off-grid or perhaps they are grid-connected during normal operation and only operate in islanded mode when the grid goes down. This latter case is becoming more and more common and is sometimes called an advanced microgrid. The key here is that they can be operated in isolation, even if they often aren’t.