One of the most talked-about issues in the energy industry today is the struggle businesses are facing to get power capacity in a timely manner, which has garnered ongoing coverage from mainstream media outlets like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Bloomberg, as well as industry publications like Canary Media and Latitude Media. 

Much of this coverage has focused on the booming data center industry, but manufacturing plants, EV charging providers, cold storage facilities, food processors, and other industries are also facing multi-year wait times for utility service capacity upgrades. These upgrades can entail substantial costs for these customers, and in many cases the initial timeline estimates are getting hit with further delays, injecting additional uncertainty into the process. As a result, businesses risk losing years of profits, or potentially missing out on new market opportunities.

While some companies are opting for temporary generators, microgrids are emerging as a more robust “BYOP” (Bring Your Own Power) solution that can offer advantages for the long term as well as the short term:

• Faster Power: Advanced microgrids that integrate multiple on-site resources like solar, battery storage, and dispatchable generators can often be built more quickly than utilities can upgrade service capacity in congested areas of the grid. 
  
  
• Enhanced Performance: Unlike temporary generators, microgrids can also provide companies with enduring competitive advantages, providing a foundation of lower-cost, more resilient, and more sustainable power supplies over the long term. 
  
  
• Flexibility: The modular architecture of microgrids offers flexibility to tailor solutions to evolving needs, with the ability to incorporate temporary generators in the short term, take site load off-grid until utility service is available, or add future capacity as needed. 

Scale's BYOP Solutions

Scale is at the forefront of designing innovative, state-of-the-art BYOP solutions for customers across a wide range of industries, including (but certainly not limited to) data centers. By using our vertically-integrated distributed energy resource (DER) development platform to streamline and accelerate project delivery, in many cases we can often offer businesses power that isn’t just available sooner but is also cheaper, more resilient, and more sustainable, providing a short-term solution as well as a long-term competitive advantage. 

Recent examples include:

QCD: Quality Custom Distributors (QCD), a national food service logistics provider, sought to take advantage of California’s electric vehicle incentives and satisfy sustainability demands from customers as well as regulators by electrifying its Los Angeles-area delivery truck fleet. However, EV charging will double on-site electricity demand, and businesses in the region are facing delays of 4 years or more for this magnitude of utility service upgrade. 

Scale has built a microgrid incorporating solar, battery storage, and dispatchable generation that is enabling QCD to get their fleet of electric trucks on the road sooner than waiting for a utility service upgrade. The on-site capacity is sufficient to enable QCD to expand its electric truck fleet in the years ahead while also providing resilience for both its EV chargers and its refrigerated warehouse. And, thanks to the use of low-cost, zero-emission solar and optimized battery storage, the microgrid will save nearly $200,000 per year in electricity costs while reducing greenhouse emissions by over 30%. Read our case study here. 

Amond World: Almond farmers in California’s Central Valley face a shortage of cold storage facilities, forcing them to choose between risks of crop spoilage or selling at discounted prices. A facility planned by Origo Investments company Amond World will provide 100 million pounds of new cold storage capacity within the mostly-rural, agricultural region, but it faced a wait of 2 years or more for a grid connection. 

Scale has enabled Amond World to start operations sooner than if it had waited for utility service, building an off-grid microgrid with solar, battery storage, and dispatchable generation. The optimized use of these distributed energy resources will provide power with up to 30% lower costs and a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to the utility grid, and the microgrid will continue providing lower-cost, lower-emission, and more resilient power even if it is eventually integrated with a grid connection. Read our case study here. 

Good for Customers, Good for the Grid, Good for Utilities

In addition to solving customers’ power supply challenges, grid-connected microgrids can offer benefits to the entire electricity system. By deferring or eliminating the need for grid upgrades to serve new capacity, they can reduce the need for transmission and distribution investments that are paid for through the rate base. And, by making some or all of a site’s load flexible and responsive to conditions on the grid, microgrids can boost system resilience and reduce energy costs by offering a lower-cost, lower-emission alternative to aging peaker plants during periods of high demand. 

Beyond their help in producing and managing electrons, DERs and microgrids provide invaluable support for utilities struggling to manage fast-growing electricity demand. By coming up with innovative solutions for grid-connected customers facing obstacles to increasing their service capacity, microgrid providers can deliver the supplemental power needed to ensure businesses remain utility customers. And, in the case of customers lacking utility service altogether, microgrid solutions can help keep them in the utility’s territory while maintaining the option of connecting to the grid in the future. 

For all of these reasons, DERs and microgrids are poised to become a key component of electricity grid architecture going forwards. With new utility-scale generation facing wait times of 4 years or more for interconnection, building distributed energy microgrids directly at the facilities where they are needed offers one of the only paths forward for powering growth in a timely manner while simultaneously strengthening the electricity grid (and the utilities) we all depend on.

Microgrids thus offer a “no regrets” strategy for businesses facing an electricity supply crunch. Reach out to Scale today at info@scalemicrogrids.com to learn more about how we can provide highly-tailored, cutting edge solutions to your company’s power needs – for both the short term and the long term.