[Utility Dive]
The towns — Angwin, Calistoga, Placerville and Grass Valley — are part of PG&E's effort to build a network of "resilience zones" and temporary ...
In December, the utility launched a request for offers for distributed generation during public safety power shut-offs...
‘Not all microgrids are created equal'
Environmental advocates see the effort as an opportunity to deploy clean distributed generation across Northern California, but the requirements associated with a prolonged shut-off could make that difficult. PG&E is looking for projects that can meet the full microgrid load — which ranges between 4 MW and 69.9 MW — for four or five consecutive days without any load drop, "and be able to meet peak and minimum customer demand" throughout that period.
"A microgrid developer once told me that not all microgrids are created equal and none of them are created the same. They're all developed uniquely for the type of load they're serving and what their purpose is," Aaron Kressig, flexible grid analyst with the Western Resource Advocates, told Utility Dive.
PG&E's requirements call for "pretty substantial" microgrids, he added. A solar-plus-storage system might be able to power a single building for a small amount of time, but the kind of generation PG&E is looking for would need to have a dispatchable load associated with it, according to Kressig.
"I don't think it's possible to meet these requirements with 100% solar-plus-storage," he said, adding, "I do think you could have an integrated system, which has significant solar-plus-storage, but also has some type of back-up power," whether that's diesel or natural gas....