PEER Perspective: Quantifying the value of microgrids

<p>According to <a href="https://www.navigantresearch.com/research/market-data-microgrids&quot; target="_blank">Navigant Research</a>, global microgrid capacity is anticipated to go from 1.4 GW in 2015 to 7.6 GW in 2024—over 500% growth in a 10 year span. But, what is driving this growth? The answer: project by project, the increasing realization of the value proposition that microgrids can offer.</p>
<p>The value of microgrids varies across different geographies, electricity markets, and regulatory policies the world over. However, there are common classifications of value streams that result upon the creation of a microgrid, including those that result from: reliability and power quality, resilience, economy, power system, and the environment. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) <a href="http://www.nema.org/Policy/Documents/Microgrid-Primer-NEMA.pdf&quot; target="_blank">Microgrid Primer</a> details these value streams and depicts them as follows in the figure below.</p>
<p><img src="https://kapost-files-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/direct/1470255229-12…; style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></p>
<p>These value streams are an interplay between the customer, the utility, and society at large, and prior to development of <a href="http://peer.gbci.org/&quot; target="_blank">PEER certification</a>, there was no agreed-upon way to uniformly measure and report the attributes and abilities of a microgrid. Now, PEER allows electricity leaders, professionals, and operators to define key performance metrics, benchmark their project to industry standards, and verify measureable outcomes The result is a comprehensive set of criteria which can be explored <a href="http://peer.gbci.org/sites/default/files/resources/Rating%20System%20v1… depth</a> and used to justify investment.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://peer.gbci.org/&quot; class="button">Learn more about what PEER can do for your power system</a></p>
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