Boulder voices spur visions of future ‘microgrid’ energy economy
Boulder County speakers, spectators emphasize interest in energy independence
Sam Lounsberry
Steve Drouilhet, center, founder of Boulder-based microgrid
controls technology developer Sustainable Power Systems, discusses the
economics of independent, freestanding energy systems Friday at the
Independence Institute in Denver with Colorado business leaders Michael
Kadillak, left, and Philip Rutkowski. Large-scale power utility systems may get pushed to the sidelines, or at least become less essential to reliable electricity delivery.
Colorado leaders of the “microgrid” movement driven by concepts similar to Boulder’s motivations to form a municipal electric utility — like local, decentralized control of supply sources and system maintenance — outlined advantages of independent energy circuits in Denver on Friday.
At an event hosted by Denver-based limited-government and free market advocate Independence Institute, state business executives and public officials explained how freestanding renewable power generation combined with increasingly cost-efficient energy storage could decrease consumer reliance on traditional power providers’ extensive networks of transmission and distribution lines.
Such systems — like individual homes, neighborhoods or critical facilities including hospitals and emergency service stations powered by solar panels hooked to battery storage to allow for consumption during cloudy weather and nighttime — could allow defection from the conventional power grid.
“It’s a system capable of standing on its own,” Peter Lilienthal, CEO of the HOMER Energy software business that helps establish microgrids.
But the more practical application of a decentralized approach to power generation and storage is to reinforce security and resilience of the existing electricity delivery system infrastructure run by large utilities, and to necessitate more aggressive load management practices that reduce the cost of electricity during peak demand periods to make a fully renewable generation portfolio more realistic.
“On microgrids, you do see this adoption of much more sophisticated digitialization, communication control technologies,” said Lilienthal, who also helped early supporters of Boulder’s municipalization effort explore the idea. “These technology improvements are erasing the advantage that centralized plants have always had. … We really believe that microgrids are a better platform for innovation. It’s easier to do it at a smaller scale first.”
Microgrids could lead to consumers reestablishing more decision-making power over how maintenance to distribution lines and generation assets would be performed. Multiple speakers and audience members cited the situation in California that left 800,000 without power last month when the state’s largest utility used preemptive shutoffs to prevent wildfire ignitions, suggesting that would be avoidable, with smaller, consumer-controlled circuits.
Speakers, including several with Boulder connections, also highlighted the economic opportunity a wide movement toward microgrid systems presents.
“This is one of the single biggest wealth-creation opportunities in our lifetime,” Joseph Goodman of renewable energy nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute, which has a Boulder office, said.
Goodman said that one of the projects he is most excited about is a microgrid project currently being worked on by Western Slope provider Holy Cross Energy, which is running spokes of lines into individual neighborhoods to create independent distribution opportunities.
Decentralized generation and distribution models like that could prove useful in maintaining power delivery during disasters like wildfires, hurricanes or even electromagnetic pulses caused naturally or by targeted attacks.
Dwight Eckert, Colorado State Director of the electromagnetic Task Force on National and Homeland Security, also sees microgrids as the the route to a electricity distribution system less vulnerable to acts of terror using electromagnetic pulses or other means of taking power offline.
“We believe we are at a watershed moment,” Eckert said. “I’m all about protecting the grid. I think the best way we could do that is to break it up into microgrids. It is pretty reliable now but it’s not resilient. It’s not resilient to attack.”
Ensuring microgrids connected to the traditional, plant-based transmission systems pose no threat to the larger grid will be essential, as well, Eckert said.
While some large utilities have resisted consumers delving into microgrids to protect their businesses, a shift is occurring.
“The way in which the landscape is changing, increasingly some utilities are seeing this as a potential resource to provide benefits to the grid,” Steve Drouilhet, founder of Boulder-based Sustainable Power Systems, said.
State Rep. Edie Hooton, D-Boulder, spoke alongside state Sen. John Cooke, R-Greeley, on their bipartisan support for increasing statutory flexibility for consumers to choose their power supplies.
Hooton explained plans to introduce a bill in the upcoming legislative session that would, if passed, initiate a study of the “community choice energy” concept, which, if legally allowed following the study, would give communities the option to purchase power from suppliers other than the utilities with the legal right to sell to consumers within certain boundaries.
The billmay let jurisdictions like Boulder opt out of purchasing power from Xcel, and find one or more suppliers to provide a high proportion of the city’s load from renewable resources while still using and paying for the Xcel transmission and distribution assets.
The bill calling for the study instead of a full-on repeal of the preemption against communities exploring other options is Hooton’s current choice, because the bolder approach would not pass without the state data collected by the probe, the lawmaker predicts.
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