Big picture thinking: lab to market!
University of California San Diego takes microgrids to the world
Byron Washom, director of strategic energy initiatives at the University of California San Diego since 2008, prefers to focus his public remarks on "the art of the possible." He's got a message in a bottle for the outside world.
"Tell your audience: we're doing this," Washom told me last week. "This is the art of the possible. And it can be replicated and scaled. Everyone can start thinking this way."
"This," of course, is the advanced microgrid that UCSD is constantly evolving in response to its own need for energy reliability and power quality. His message is more important than the technical details, at least for today's column. So I give him the floor here.
"One of our 2012 objectives is to replicate our 42-megawatt microgrid at scale, both larger and smaller," Washom said. "Rather than be a unique icon of the microgrid that's operating very efficiently, our lab-to-market model becomes reality when we're able to replicate elsewhere what we're doing here at other campuses, military bases, industrial complexes, data centers, etc.
"Data centers are a huge market for microgrids," he said, warming to his sermon. "They already are microgrids, as are FAA air traffic control centers. Today, those types of organizations look at their energy reliability and power quality investments as a cost center rather than a profit center. That investment can be deployed into the marketplace to earn revenue.
"What we're finding is that as we optimize the software and understand the orchestration of the various software parties under co-funding from the California Energy Commission, the California Public Utilities Commission, the U.S. Department of Energy and the private sector, the incremental cost to do the next microgrid is going to be small," he continued. "Concurrently, the price for measuring and metering is dropping dramatically. The price for wireless communication from measuring device to central server is dropping dramatically. And the ability to analyze that data is increasing. So the next microgrid will be far less expensive to deploy, implement and operate than what we've incurred. That's what we're all about at UCSD, lab-to-market.
"We have a growing number of industrial partners that work with us," he added. "We love our research, but we try to push it out of the labs on campus and into the market as expeditiously as possible."
Success in that endeavor has drawn worldwide interest. Visitors to UCSD's microgrid bring top brass from the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Marine Corp., the California Energy Commission, the California Public Utility Commission as well as foreign dignitaries. The Solar Electric Power Association holds its Utility Solar conference in San Diego next week. UCSD is site hosting DOE's Microgrid Workshop at the end of August.
"It's a major visitor every week," Washom told me. "That's one reason our industrial partners want to participate. It's not just our research and research philosophy, but they get a lot of visibility. We're a flagship and people make a point to visit us. And our industrial partners gain exposure they wouldn't get otherwise."
The original impetus for UCSD's microgrid, as noted, was reliability and power quality—two elements in demand by the variety of organizations Washom cited. Thus, this evangelist is certain that UCSD's needs will resonate with others.
"Down at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, we store every ice core sample they have ever taken from the Arctic or Antarctica over the past one hundred years," Washom said. "That represents an antiquity of climate change research. So I jokingly say that our No. 1 job is to 'keep the popsicles frozen.' Add patient care at our hospitals, and you cannot be cavalier about reliability. When you have scientists with a lifetime of research that depends upon sustained operations you're not cavalier about reliability."
That's Washom's "message in a bottle": many oft-cited smart grid/microgrid challenges are being met. Tomorrow, we'll run the second part of this interview, in which Washom gives details on the UCSD microgrid and discusses how microgrids and centralized power will mesh in the near future.
We previously covered one example when Washom appeared at a KEMA conference in Denver last month:
"The Future Grid: A Seamless Ebb and Flow of Supply and Demand?"
Phil Carson
Editor-in-chief
Intelligent Utility Daily
pcarson@energycentral.com
303-228-4757
