In the course of the clean energy transition, more renewable generation is being put on the grid and more operations and appliances are being electrified. This means the when and where of how our electricity is produced is changing, and the quantity of electricity needed to meet new demand is increasing. And, as our electricity production and consumption patterns evolve, our electric grid — including the way we think about it and the functions we need it to serve — will have to evolve too.
On February 14, Metro CERT hosted an event in anticipation of these coming changes, in partnership with the Center for Microgrid Research at the University of St. Thomas, to discuss grid and battery storage innovation. In addition to Valentine’s cookies and a secret cheesy event tagline (Watts not to love – get it?) we organized a panel of four speakers who are thinking about the grid transition in different ways, followed by a tour of the on-campus microgrid at St. Thomas.
Atkinson is a global speaker on innovative grid architecture and management, and her company develops software for grid operators and energy providers. She argued that the way many people are thinking about improving capacity on the grid right now is just ‘bigger-ing’ the current system, which translates to deploying more physical (and expensive) infrastructure. Rather, a more cost- and time-effective approach is to make the current infrastructure we have more flexible and demand-responsive. 
Connexus is the Midwest’s largest electric co-operative, and a leader in renewable deployment and grid reliability. Loehlein discussed a handful of innovative storage projects Connexus is developing to advance these goals, including a substation-sited battery storage project in Vadnais Heights, the first in the U.S. Battery storage will be important for utilities as they continue to site renewable energy projects, as it will allow time-variable energy resources like wind and solar to be captured and stored during peak production hours, and then to be discharged during peak demand consumption hours for use by their customers. 
Based on a pioneering concept model from Baltimore, the City of Minneapolis is developing three ‘Community Resilience Hubs’ across North and South Minneapolis. The City states the goal for these hubs is to “strengthen the resilience of the Minneapolis community in times of crisis and in daily life.” Balyan presented that these hubs will include solar and battery storage back-ups, for community access to electricity during emergencies, but are intended to be much more in order to encompass what community-defined resilience means. Resilience hubs elsewhere operate as community spaces, offering preparedness training, venues for communications and education, and to share services and programming. 
Microgrids are localized energy systems that can operate while connected to the grid (in ‘grid-mode’) AND without the grid (in ‘island-mode’) and can seamlessly transition between the two modes. This allows for more resilient grids, as they can accommodate all different types of energy resources, and can keep power running in island-mode, even if the broader grid is down. The Center provides state-of-the-art hands-on experience and research opportunities in order to produce the next generation of microgrid engineers and technology leaders. The Center has plans to develop two more microgrids on campus to create “the world’s first networked microgrid for urban infrastructure reliability and resiliency demonstration.”
