The world is reinventing electricity. This reinvention will affect every aspect of the electric power system, including:

  1. How we make it (from clean renewable sources)
  2. How we use it (far more efficiently)
  3. What we use it for (including electric transportation)
  4. How we deliver it (via a smart, self-healing grid)

The Santa Fe Global Microgrid Center and Smart Systems Lab will play a crucial role in this energy transformation worldwide, while bringing new revenues and jobs to the local region.

Center Components

GMC will serve as a real-world laboratory for developing, demonstrating, and deploying next-generation integrated infrastructure, beginning with electricity, and later expanding to include telecommunications, water, gas, electric vehicles, and other essential services. More specifically, it will include:

  1. A microgrid innovation laboratory, including applied R&D, human factors, and simulation and modeling
  2. A workforce training and professional development program
  3. A testing, certification, and interoperability center for components and modules
  4. Smart city (“unified”) infrastructure R&D (in a future phase)

Market Needs, Gaps, and Opportunities

Microgrids are modern, small-scale versions of the centralized electricity system. They achieve specific local goals, such as reliability, carbon emission reduction, diversification of energy sources, and cost reduction, established by the community being served. Like the bulk power grid, smart microgrids generate, distribute, and regulate the flow of electricity to consumers, but do so locally. Smart microgrids are an ideal way to integrate renewable resources on the community level and allow for customer participation in the electricity enterprise. They can connect and disconnect from the main grid as desired. Many experts believe microgrids (as depicted in the graphic) are the future of the electric power system because of their many advantages.

But much research and development still needs to be done to make those benefits real. GMC will play a nationally prominent role in that much-needed R&D, with the associated economic benefits. Preliminary planning work has identified several large technical, structural, and market gaps.

Santa Fe brings numerous strengths to meeting these challenges, among them: Santa Fe Community College’s Sustainable Technologies Center; world-class expertise in complex systems, visualization and modeling, and smart grid technologies in the region (including three national energy laboratories); a strong interest in energy independence and localization, with the potential for a municipal grid; and the Community College District as a potential test bed.

In addition, the Center plans to support the United Nations “Sustainable Energy for All” initiative, designed to reach the 2.4 billion people on the planet who lack reliable access to electricity.

Regional and National Impacts

The Center could be an important first step toward developing a smart city plan and grid for Santa Fe, with important economic impacts in new business and job creation. It will also be designed so that successful results can be diffused to other interested communities nationally, and worldwide. This will enhance the economic returns to GMC and Santa Fe, and magnify the social impact.

The Lab will employ SFIP’s multi-disciplinary approach, combining (and experimenting with) advanced technology; user-centered design; public policy; private finance; and environmental and social considerations; while supporting the creation of intellectual property, spinouts, and entrepreneurial activity.

Partners & Planning Team

The Center is a collaborative project of SFIP and Santa Fe Community College, which will develop an associated workforce training and professional development component. Other industry, research, and public sector collaborators will join as the project develops.

Project Director Terry Mohn, founder of General MicroGrids, Inc., is an internationally recognized smart grid and microgrid expert, who served as chief technology strategist for Sempra’s San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Gas. He is an advisor to the U.S. Departments of Energy and Commerce, and chairs the MicroGrid working group of the U.N. Foundation’s Sustainable Energy for All initiative.  Project Advisor Jesse Berst is Managing Director of Global Smart Energy, Inc., a strategic consulting firm; and Chief Analyst at SmartGridNews.com, the internet’s largest and highest-ranked smart grid site.

Endorsements

GMC has been endorsed by the NM Federal Congressional delegation, and the Energy Task Force of the Regional Planning Authority (a joint Santa Fe County/City entity). The governing bodies of both the City of Santa Fe and Santa Fe County have passed resolutions in support of the Center’s activities and microgrid deployments in the region.

Development Phases and Status

The project will proceed in three budget and fundraising phases:

Phase I — Seed Funds for a preliminary technical and business plan, to procure:

Phase II — Planning Funds for an investment-grade business, finance, operations, implementation, and tech/engineering plan, to procure:

Phase III — Implementation Funds from federal and private investment sources, to physically build out the Microgrid and Center.