Not only do microgrids provide reliable power in hard-to-reach places, but they also offer resilience and are a critical stepping-stone to increase opportunity. Born out of necessity, energy access microgrids are a robust, cost-effective solution that delivers life changing impact and offers energy agency to communities. Learn about how these applications are advancing the technology for all microgrids. Each panel member will describe an innovation that has come from their work in energy access as well as spotlighting their favorite project and its impact.

As microgrids gain popularity in the commercial and industrial (C&I) sector, organizations such as hospitals, educational institutions, and data centers are leveraging them to enhance energy efficiency, reliability, and sustainability. However, a significant opportunity remains untapped: only a fraction of microgrid users fully leverage their economic potential by participating in Virtual Power Plants (VPPs).  This panel will highlight how VPPs benefit C&I organizations through cost savings, revenue generation, and energy optimization. Drawing from case studies, the panel will explore the market opportunities, key considerations for optimizing distributed energy resources (DERs) in grid services programs, and how accounting for VPP participation can strengthen investment analyses, making project financing more attainable.   The panel will outline different tactics and strategy considerations for deploying DERMS and VPPs at scale, the interplay between energy technologies, financial models, and regulatory frameworks, and offer guidance as to how to navigate the complexities of implementing economically viable solutions. 

Right-of-way rules provide fundamental assumptions of what it means to be a public utility in states. Utilities are considered entities that distribute electricity across properties, while entities that consume and produce energy on their own property are customer-generators. Growing interest in multi-customer microgrids is profoundly challenging these assumptions. 
Should non-utility microgrid operators be allowed to distribute and manage energy across a community or across several businesses? Could states consider regulatory classifications that strike a ‘middle ground’ between customer and public utility? What guardrails must be applied to ensure that exemptions to right-of-way rules are thoughtful, safe, and provide public benefits?
This panel will approach these complicated questions, diving into the history and application of right-of-way restrictions and illustrating state narratives where rules were reconsidered, overcome, or reinforced in multi-customer microgrid contexts. 
 

Increasing capacity needs are growing at a rate greater than many utilities have ability to address without the use of distributed energy resources (DERs). Whether these solutions are being installed behind the meter (BTM) or in front of the meter (FTM), they are an efficient and effective means to quickly address growing capacity needs. This challenge is shaping up to be an issue for the whole electric power sector. This interactive panel session will present the benefits of DER programs for solving growing capacity needs. It will include discussion on the rate structure, DER solution ownership models, and the pros/cons of BTM vs. FTM deployments.

Microgrid projects demand meticulous planning and execution from the early feasibility through design, implementation, operations, and optimization. This panel will equip owners with the tools to identify the most critical elements for their projects. We also will provide practical steps on how to act on the study and design results, from refining system design to selecting equipment that aligns with the study findings. 
Beyond understanding the technical requirements, owners must ensure they have the right Engineer of Record (EOR) to carry out these studies effectively. Attendees will leave with not only a clear understanding of the necessary technical analyses but also practical tips for selecting an EOR that can deliver optimal project outcomes and long-term system reliability – supporting the full lifecycle of a project.

Microgrids are enabling energy resilience and sustainability in the multifamily buildings sector. SouthTown in Ann Arbor supports this point. Construction started in March 2024. This project is an eight-story mass-timber multifamily residence with commercial space and an internal garage with EV charging for all spaces. The power to the site is from a microgrid with fuel cells, solar PV, and energy storage. The non-combustion resources supply power, heating, and cooling alongside a geothermal heat pump system. There is no electric utility connection to the site. The primary objectives of this low-to-middle income residence are (1) to provide a safe place to shelter-in-place when the grid fails in the deep of winter, and (2) provide a net zero GHG emission-free lifestyle. This panel will describe the residential site, microgrid, fit to the city’s sustainability goals, and benefits and challenges of going off-grid.

Health care facilities are increasingly adding microgrids to their electrical systems for power reliability and resilience. Past guidelines required health care organizations to use fossil fuel-fired generators for backup power for most of their facilities. But resilient power has come a long way, and, with help from the California Energy Commission (CEC), the health care industry can now use solar, batteries, fuel cells, wind turbines, and other renewable energy technologies for backup power generation. This session will draw on operational health care microgrid projects to illustrate that these systems can simultaneously lower utility costs, reduce facilities’ carbon footprint, and provide much needed resilience. The panel also will share challenges encountered, goals realized, lessons learned, and the cascading benefits of the integration of microgrids. 

Increasingly, microgrids are being deployed to provide carbon-free energy and resilience for data centers, while reducing stress on the grid. This panel will discuss microgrid applicability for the growing data center market and how private entities, developers, and utilities can work together to service this complex problem and grow use applications of distributed technologies. This panel will present solutions and technologies, and actionable strategies for data centers to position the facilities favorably in the energy queue. This will help ensure that data centers can effectively scale to meet the challenges posed by burgeoning energy requirements driven by AI and other high-demand sectors.

The US military operates in austere environments with contested logistics impacting energy demands and desires a sustainable and independent capability to mitigate energy challenges with fossil fuels. New Department of Defense (DoD) energy technologies are needed to improve resilience, optimize demand, and assure energy supply; that is "mission assurance through energy assurance." Specifically, DoD's "vision of sustainability is to maintain the ability to operate into the future without decline – either in the mission or in the natural and manufactured systems that support it." This panel will draw on new and operational microgrid projects at US Air Force and US Army bases and installations to illustrate the military’s goal to increase energy independence and resilience while also reducing energy costs and carbon emissions. 

There has been a slowdown in adoption of personal electric vehicles (EVs), but the commercial fleet EV adoption continues to grow. Whether the growth is associated with last-mile delivery fleets or the concentration of commercial fleet deployment at a specific location such as an airport, these loads continue to be a concern for the utility sector. The sector is challenged with not only the data center explosion but the ever-increasing demand to serve these loads as well.  This challenge is shaping up to be an issue for the whole electric power sector. This session will take the form of an interactive panel to present the pros and cons associated with using hybrid microgrids. The benefits include providing the required capacity and to economically optimize asset utilization and environmentally optimized greenhouse gas emissions for companies that deploy the systems. 
 

Cordova is the first remote Alaskan community to integrate a modular data center into an existing microgrid powered primarily by renewable energy. The microgrid is over 100 years old and serves an isolated fishing community without access to roads. The microgrid is a run-of-the-river hydro, li-ion battery and diesel hybrid system. It relies upon 75% renewable resources and features among the lowest cost electricity in all of Alaska. In 2024, an edge data center from Greensparc was installed to improve digital communication for the entire community and to optimize operations of this cooperative utility. This panel will share the journey of Cordova – from first power to data center integration – and the facility’s operations results and lessons learned. 

As urban areas worldwide transition toward a smart cities paradigm of planning and governance, the integration of electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) interactions into microgrids is a crucial step to support the decarbonization of transportation systems; yet this transition must also prioritize overall grid resilience. The transition from liquid fuels to electricity presents many challenges – including the risk of relying on utility power supplies that are becoming increasingly expensive, yet also increasingly prone to outages in many regions. On-site microgrids integrating solar, battery storage, and backup generation can offer a cheaper, cleaner, and more resilient way to power electric transit fleets, and working with microgrid providers can significantly de-risk their transition overall. This panel will illustrate the benefits of using microgrids to enable transit electrification. 

In today’s evolving energy landscape, the demand for reliable and flexible energy solutions is more critical than ever, especially for remote or off-grid locations. Microgrids are a key enabler, as they can be deployed near the source of demand, and they can run on a variety of fuels. Historically, microgrids generated power using fossil fuel-fired combined heat and power and reciprocating engine generators. Today, however, projects are increasingly leveraging more sustainable resources like solar power and energy storage and renewable natural gas. Meantime, geothermal is emerging as a potential resource for microgrids. Mobile solutions, such as mobile LNG storage and regasification units, are emerging as well to address the need for flexible options. This panel will discuss these emerging fuels and mobile solutions that can maximize the benefits of microgrids.  

Many airports are pursuing on-site power and microgrid technologies as a way to protect against grid outages. Increasing air traffic, sustainability goals, and fears of utility-scale outages will continue to drive microgrid and on-site power adoption at many airports. The World Economic Forum has noted that the electric and on-site power requirements will be five to 10 times higher over the next 25 years. Microgrids offer airports more resiliency in the wake of catastrophic events such as extreme weather, as well as power flexibility from a combination of on-site renewables, gas or diesel generators, and a grid-tied connection. This panel will provide additional background on the value proposition of deploying microgrids at airports, supported by projects that are either underway or completed. 

In recent years, severe weather has challenged the Texas grid, resulting in significant challenges for critical infrastructure and businesses who rely on uninterrupted power. Houston, Texas, the fourth most populous city in the US, is situated less than 50 miles from the Gulf of Mexico along a path known as "Hurricane Alley," making nearly every hurricane season an active exercise in emergency preparedness.  By examining performance during three Houston severe weather events—Winter Storm Uri, the May 2024 derecho, and Hurricane Beryl— this session will explain how dual-purpose microgrids powered by natural gas are foundational to successful emergency response and outage mitigation. Microgrids provide reliable backup power for critical infrastructure and services, thereby reducing the number of communities and businesses relying on county or city emergency response resources. They also reduce load on the grid during periods of grid stress, reducing the risk of supply-related outages.  This panel will explore how microgrids support critical needs during an emergency, using storm response as a case study of their performance when the grid goes down. Panelists will discuss the challenges of resiliency planning as weather becomes increasingly disruptive for aging grid infrastructure and the specific pain points that arose during these disasters. Attendees will leave with a better understanding of resiliency and the mission-critical reason for microgrids.

While there are nearly 700 microgrids across the country, these systems provide less than 1% of the US’s total electricity. As natural disasters, like deadly hurricanes and wildfires, become more commonplace and AI and data centers put more strain on the grid, investing in more advanced microgrid projects becomes ever critical.  This panel will pull back the curtain on the current challenges and opportunities of microgrid development and how to catalyze investment in the coming years. This session will include investor perspectives on the macroeconomic trends driving the need for microgrids and why microgrid projects should be on every investor’s radar; steps the investment community can take to bolster investment into microgrid infrastructure for 24/7 clean energy; and ways to overcome development and financing obstacles to scale up microgrids for widespread deployment, including tackling high upfront costs. Attendees will walk away with a better understanding of how to finance microgrid projects and achieve economies of scale. These takeaways will help to promote microgrid deployment across the US in the coming years.

This panel will highlight the needs for training and credentialing of microgrid professionals, including sector representation such as defense, utility, vendors, regulators, developers, and financial institutions. Needs will be directly paired with existing training programs being scaled to meet market demand.  Speakers will highlight concept-based lessons paired with hands-on demonstration and application through simulations and hardware integration. 
Training pathways will be introduced for career tracks including executives, managers, designers, operators, and technicians. The speakers will also discuss customizable training opportunities curated from over 500 hours of content to meet the fast pace and varied needs of the microgrid industry.
Join us as we discuss how to equip the next generation of energy experts with the skills needed to shape the future of microgrids.