Planning and implementation of bankable microgrids

Currently, many Microgrid projects remain financially uncertain and not bankable for institutional investors due to major challenges in existing planning and design methods that require multiple, complex steps and software tools. Existing techniques treat every Microgrid project as a unique system, resulting in expensive, non-standardized approaches and implementations which cannot be compared. That is, it is not possible to correlate the results from different planning methods performed by different project developers and/or engineering companies. This very expensive individual process cannot guarantee financial revenue streams, cannot be reliably audited, impedes pooling of multiple Microgrid projects into a financial asset class, nor does it allow for wide-spread and attractive Microgrid and Distributed Energy Resource projects deployment. Thus, a reliable, integrated, and streamlined process is needed that guides the Microgrid developer and engineer through conceptual design, engineering, detailed electrical design, implementation, and operation in a standardized and data driven approach, creating reliable results and financial indicators that can be audited and repeated by investors and financers. This article describes the steps and methods involved in creating bankable Microgrids by relying on an integrated Microgrid planning software approach that unifies proven technologies and tested planning methods, researched and developed by the United States National Laboratory System as well as the US Department of Energy, to reduce design times.