Good news for Connecticut residents – Governor Dannel P. Malloy recently announced that nine microgrid projects throughout the state have been awarded $18 million in funding from the DEEP Microgrid Pilot Program. He was accompanied by Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) Commissioner Daniel C. Esty and state and local officials. The purpose of the program is to innovate new creative ways to prevent important buildings and equipment from going without power during outages on the grid as caused by recent storms.
What is a Microgrid? A Microgrid, just as it sounds, is a small scale version of a normal electrical grid with power plants (generators). Critical facilities and town centers could get their electricity from microgrids on a 24/7 basis with or without utility supplying power. The trick is isolating the system as soon as the utility is lost (goes out) requiring an isolation system to enable the microgrid to operate “Islanded”, providing power regardless of widespread outages. Heat can also be recovered from the Microgrid electrical generating equipment by Heat Recovery Equipment, in a Combined Heat and Power system or a sometimes referred as a Co-Gen system. The heat can be used to heat or cool buildings, people or industrial process.
Kuegler Associates, LLC, Has been involved with the Navy for concept development of these types of systems.
More to follow.
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