Scale Microgrid Solutions, a technology company focused on developing sustainable, on-site energy solutions for mission critical facilities, worked with Schneider Electric, to launch the Rapid Response Modular Microgrid (R2M2). The R2M2 is a modular and scalable microgrid designed to deliver resilience, sustainable and affordable power to combat the life safety and business continuity impact of outages as a result of severe weather and other natural disasters, such as wildfire season in California.
Electrical transmission and distribution infrastructure have been responsible for igniting a significant percentage of California’s recent devastating wildfires. Consequently, state utilities have proposed drastically increasing the quantity and duration of Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) as part of their wildfire mitigation plans. While increasing PSPS is a necessary measure, the critical infrastructure is not equipped to support life safety and business continuity concerns surrounding routine PSPS events. Additionally, California’s economy, largely driven by digital technology companies, is not built to withstand multiple long-duration electric outages, which are expected to last two to five days on average.
According to Scale Microgrid Solutions, the planned Public Power Safety Shutoffs represent a necessary solution born out of the limitations of our current electricity infrastructure. Microgrid technology has advanced to where so companies can offer local access to secure and flexible power to help businesses and communities gain more control over the availability of electricity for their operations.
The R2M2 provides a solution for this problem by utilizing commercially available technology that can deliver sustainable resilience to facilities across the state more quickly and cost-effectively than traditional solutions.
Leveraging Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure architecture, the R2M2 features Schneider Electric’s Energy Control Center (ECC) – an onsite power control center that allows customers to simplify and optimize the integration of distributed energy resources. Integrated with Energy Control Center is Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Microgrid Advisor (EMA), a cloud-based, demand-side management platform. The combination of ECC and EMA adds to the scalability of the R2M2, allowing customers to expand DER over time, even after installation, while the advanced controls enhance flexibility to optimize power management. In addition, Schneider Electric’s Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) allows the host facility to operate at up to 100% of peak electric demand for an extended duration.
The Rapid Response Modular Microgrid (R2M2) further addresses the timeframe, cost and scalability concerns of some legacy microgrid systems:
Additionally, unlike diesel generators, there is no on-site fuel storage requirements to use R2M2 and performance of the system is not dependent on fuel-supply logistics.
