Microgrids Are Making Good Sense to Many Communities

Our energy system is undergoing a massive amount of change. Whether it’s converting coal plants to natural gas, incorporating intermittent renewable sources like solar and wind farms, or dealing with demand management or distributed generation from residential rooftop solar; our traditional grid and its operators are experiencing a great deal of stress.

A new tool, which is really an old tool that was buried deep in the toolbox, is offering improved capability for managing these changes with a number of additional fringe benefits. That tool is the microgrid.

In truth, microgrids have been around since the time of Thomas Edison, but as power systems rapidly expanded, they soon got left behind. But given the needs of the current environmnet, they are making quite a comeback.

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RP Siegel, author and inventor, shines a powerful light on numerous environmental and technological topics. He has been published in business and technical journals and has written three books. His third, co-authored with Roger Saillant, is Vapor Trails, an eco-thriller that is being adapted for the big screen. RP is a professional engineer – and a prolific inventor, with 50 patents, numerous awards, and several commercial products. He is president of Rain Mountain LLC and is an active environmental advocate in his hometown of Rochester, N.Y. In addition to Justmeans, he writes for Triple Pundit, ThomasNet News, and Energy Viewpoints, occasionally contributing to Mechanical Engineering, Strategy + Business, and Huffington Post.