#microgrid

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1. A universal adapter for solar, batteries, EVs, and microgrids is here

“[… T]he technology could be key to dealing with the torrent of power demand from data centers, factories, and electric-vehicle charging hubs that threatens to overwhelm the grid[.…] Using a DG Matrix solid-state transformer can cost half as much as using the standard mix of multiple technologies to connect the components of a typical on-site microgrid, Inam said. It also makes it a lot simpler to quickly mix and match devices or to change up the configuration of systems[….]”

2. Sniffer dogs may have rediscovered a lost population of Sumatran rhinos

“They’d tried everything to locate any remaining rhinos in Way Kambas[… but a]fter years of searching, it took the dogs, named Yagi and Quinn, just two days to find the [rhino] scat. […] “With fewer than 50 [Sumatran rhinos] in the entire global population, even a single individual is a big deal.” […] He adds that conservation dogs work best finding animals that occur at low densities, are secretive, and dwell in “structurally complex landscapes.””

3. Norway pledges more direct funding to support Indigenous peoples in Brazil

“By 2026, one of [the Norwegian Embassy’s] programs plans to provide 91% of its annual funding directly to Indigenous-led funds and organizations[….] The Norwegian Indigenous Peoples Programme (NIPP), which the embassy has managed since 2002, supports projects in Brazil that primarily focus on capacity building within Indigenous organizations, securing Indigenous rights, and promoting sustainable land management and gender rights.”

4. Researchers bring science into the heart of the forest – forest management developed together with local communities

“The project aims to identify and test forest management practices that optimise both biodiversity and carbon storage while supporting rural livelihoods and climate change adaptation. […] “This will enable land management organisations to better protect our most vulnerable forests and sustainably use our most resilient forests, devising new management strategies that will successfully meet biodiversity and carbon objectives[….]””

5. First baby dormice born in park project milestone

“Hazel dormice are a native rodent to the UK[… but] the dormouse population has declined by 70% nationally since 2000, and the species is now extinct in 20 English counties, according to a 2023 report. […] More than 20 hazel dormice were released at Bradgate Park, near Newtown Linford, over the summer. […] Park staff said 11 baby dormice were found on Monday during inspections of the [open release] cages, along with 19 nests.”

Efforts to prevent wildfires, which are once again raging across California, have plunged vast parts of the state into darkness.

Millions of people lost power in October in a series of deliberate blackouts intended to preempt power lines from sparking wildfires in especially dry, windy conditions. Cell towers died, leaving many without phone service. Traffic lights blinked out. Hospitals scrambled to keep lifesaving equipment running on backup generators.

While disruptive, the cautionary electricity outages starting October 9 were meant to ward off something even more disastrous. In 2017 and 2018, wildfire season caused record-breaking destruction. Hundreds of fires in California in 2018 alone are thought to have been sparked by equipment run by power supply companies. Many were relatively small and easily put out, but others were more catastrophic — including the deadliest fire in California’s history, known as the Camp Fire, which killed more than 80 people and leveled the town of Paradise last November.

With wildfire risks increasing as climate change leaves the landscape increasingly parched (SN: 7/15/15), mass power outages could become the new normal — unless the electricity system can be made more fire-safe. Science News asked two experts in energy infrastructure how to improve the power grid so it poses less of a threat amid heightened wildfire risks.

Could burying power lines curb wildfire risks?

“Putting lines underground is a great solution. It’s also very pricy,” says Alexandra von Meier of the University of California, Berkeley. “Instead of a million dollars a mile, you’re looking at 10 million dollars. In places where there’s many miles of exposed or vulnerable terrain, that’s a big price tag.”

To avoid breaking the bank, though, utilities could bury lines only in areas that are particularly vulnerable to future wildfires, says Sayanti Mukherjee of the University of Buffalo in New York, who is working on a wildfire risk analysis for different counties in California.

Why don’t blackouts target only areas with wildfire risks?

Power line networks are sprawling, ferrying electricity over long distances. California’s biggest power company alone, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., supplies some 5 million customers in the state’s central and northern areas. And while some communities spread farther into fire-prone woodlands and prairies (SN: 11/15/18), even customers in relatively fire-safe areas are still served by transmission lines that cut through tinderlike terrain, such as grass-covered hills. So those homes have to be unplugged as well.

The grid could be redesigned to feed electricity into smaller, more isolated “microgrids,” Mukherjee says. “The key benefit of a microgrid is that it can go into ‘island mode’” — disconnecting from the main power grid and switching to a local energy source in an emergency. “That way, we can prevent mass power outages for thousands of people who aren’t even getting directly affected by the wildfires,” she says. Today, microgrids are largely used by airports, university campuses or companies, and typically rely on gas or diesel backup generators.

How do we know where it’s safe to keep the power on?

Historically, utilities “have relied a lot on physical inspections” of vast power line networks, von Meier says. “There’s now really a movement to begin to apply more advanced computer science techniques” to analyze data about electrical activity across the grid to identify remote disturbances, such as tree branches getting too close to power lines. Plants touching electrical equipment sparked at least one of the blazes that contributed to the Camp Fire inferno.

Sensors installed along power lines could monitor environmental conditions, such as wind and air temperature, which can raise alarms about possible new fires or warn where they might spread (SN: 9/9/18).

How soon can we expect to see changes in the power grid?

“I’m expecting to see more power shutoffs, and to see that continue next year and the year after,” says von Meier, who is working with colleagues to develop a microgrid system where multiple homes on a city block could share energy from household solar panels. Meanwhile, there are microgrid pilot projects, such as the San Diego Gas and Electric Company’s microgrid in Borrego Springs, which can function independently during power outages.

Real life solarpunk: neighborhood microgrid in Brooklyn:

Solar Experiment Lets Neighbors Trade Energy Among Themselves

In a promising experiment in an affluent swath of the borough, dozens of solar-panel arrays spread across rowhouse rooftops are wired into a growing network. Called the Brooklyn Microgrid, the project is signing up residents and businesses to a virtual trading platform that will allow solar-energy producers to sell excess-electricity credits from their systems to buyers in the group, who may live as close as next door.

The project is still in its early stages — it has just 50 participants thus far — but its implications could be far reaching. The idea is to create a kind of virtual, peer-to-peer energy trading system built on blockchain, the database technology that underlies cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

(via Solar Experiment Lets Neighbors Trade Energy Among Themselves - The New York Times)

Microgrids and distributed energy resources can help facilities think differently about energy generation, storage, resilience, and grid interaction. These systems may include solar, batteries, generators, controls, and other technologies depending on the site.

The global energy landscape is undergoing a historic transformation. Renewable energy adoption is accelerating, electric vehicles are becoming mainstream, battery energy storage systems are expanding rapidly, and microgrids are emerging as critical infrastructure for energy resilience and grid stability. At the center of this transition lies a powerful enabling technology: the bidirectional DC power supply.

Unlike traditional power supplies that only deliver energy in one direction, bidirectional DC power supplies can both source and absorb power. This capability is becoming increasingly important as modern energy systems evolve from centralized, one-way electrical networks into highly dynamic ecosystems characterized by distributed generation, energy storage, vehicle-to-grid interaction, and intelligent power management.

As energy storage systems and microgrids become more sophisticated, the demand for advanced bidirectional power testing solutions is growing rapidly across industries including renewable energy, electric vehicles, utilities, aerospace, semiconductor manufacturing, and research laboratories.

What Is a Bidirectional DC Power Supply?

A bidirectional DC power supply is an advanced programmable power device capable of operating in two modes simultaneously:

Source mode: supplying DC power to a device under test

Sink mode: absorbing energy returned from the device under test

Traditional DC power supplies only provide power outward. When testing systems such as batteries, inverters, or regenerative motor drives, excess energy is often dissipated as heat through resistive loads. Bidirectional systems, however, can recover and recycle this energy back into the grid or internal power system, significantly improving efficiency.

This dual-function capability makes bidirectional power supplies particularly valuable for testing energy storage systems, renewable energy converters, electric vehicle systems, and microgrids where energy constantly flows in multiple directions.

Industry analysts project strong growth for the bidirectional DC power supply market as renewable energy integration and EV adoption continue accelerating globally.

Why Energy Storage Systems Are Driving Demand

Battery energy storage systems (BESS) are becoming one of the fastest-growing segments in the global energy industry. Governments, utilities, and private companies are deploying large-scale storage systems to support renewable energy integration, grid balancing, backup power, and peak shaving applications.

Modern battery systems are highly dynamic. During operation, they constantly alternate between charging and discharging states depending on grid demand, renewable generation levels, and energy market conditions.

Testing these systems requires equipment capable of reproducing realistic bidirectional energy flows.

Bidirectional DC power supplies are widely used for:

Battery charge-discharge cycling

Battery management system (BMS) validation

State-of-charge simulation

Energy storage inverter testing

Grid interaction simulation

Battery degradation analysis

Thermal performance evaluation

Because these power systems can both source and absorb energy, they allow engineers to simulate realistic operating conditions with high precision and energy efficiency.

This capability becomes especially important in large-scale battery testing environments, where energy consumption and heat generation can become significant operational challenges.

The Expansion of DC Microgrids

Traditional electrical grids were designed around centralized generation and one-way energy flow. Modern energy systems are increasingly moving toward decentralized architectures where renewable generation, battery storage, and intelligent controls operate together locally.

This is driving rapid growth in DC microgrids.

A DC microgrid is a localized energy network that integrates distributed energy resources such as:

Solar photovoltaic systems

Battery storage

EV charging systems

Fuel cells

DC loads

Smart inverters

DC microgrids offer several advantages over conventional AC systems, including:

Higher energy efficiency

Reduced conversion losses

Easier renewable integration

Improved battery compatibility

Faster control response

Simplified power electronics architecture

Research into hybrid AC/DC microgrids shows that advanced distributed energy storage and bidirectional power management are becoming essential for maintaining voltage stability and improving resilience in next-generation energy systems.

Bidirectional DC power supplies play a central role in validating and testing these systems.

Supporting Renewable Energy Integration

Renewable energy sources such as solar and wind introduce variability and intermittency into the electrical grid. Energy storage systems and microgrids help balance these fluctuations, but they also create highly dynamic electrical environments.

Bidirectional power supplies are increasingly used to test:

Solar inverter systems

Energy storage converters

Hybrid renewable systems

DC-DC converters

Grid-forming inverters

Smart energy controllers

Recent research highlights the importance of advanced bidirectional DC/DC converters for maintaining power balance and reducing ripple in DC microgrids.

Unlike traditional test equipment, bidirectional systems can emulate both energy generation and energy consumption scenarios. This allows engineers to evaluate how renewable energy systems behave under rapidly changing conditions, including cloud cover fluctuations, load spikes, and grid disturbances.

As renewable penetration increases globally, the need for accurate and flexible testing solutions continues to grow.

Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) Is Accelerating Bidirectional Testing Needs

One of the most important emerging trends in the energy industry is vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology.

V2G enables electric vehicles to function as mobile energy storage assets capable of both consuming and supplying electricity. In this model, EV batteries can discharge energy back into homes, businesses, or the utility grid during periods of high demand.

This fundamentally changes the relationship between transportation and power infrastructure.

Testing V2G systems requires advanced bidirectional power capabilities because energy must move seamlessly in both directions between the grid and the vehicle.

Industry experts note that bidirectional charging and V2G applications are rapidly moving beyond pilot projects and into commercial deployment.

Bidirectional DC power supplies are now essential for validating:

V2G charging systems

Vehicle-to-home (V2H) systems

Bidirectional EV chargers

Charging communication protocols

Grid synchronization

Four-quadrant power measurements

Dynamic load transitions

As bidirectional charging infrastructure expands, testing laboratories and manufacturers increasingly require programmable source-and-sink power systems capable of reproducing realistic EV-grid interaction scenarios.

Improving Energy Efficiency Through Regeneration

One of the biggest advantages of bidirectional power supplies is regenerative energy recovery.

Traditional electronic loads dissipate absorbed energy as heat, which wastes electricity and increases cooling requirements. Bidirectional systems can instead feed absorbed energy back into the electrical grid, significantly improving overall energy efficiency.

This provides several major benefits:

Lower operating costs

Reduced cooling requirements

Improved sustainability

Smaller facility energy footprint

Higher testing efficiency

Reduced thermal stress

In large-scale battery testing facilities or EV charging validation labs, regenerative energy recovery can save enormous amounts of electricity.

As sustainability and carbon reduction become major priorities across industries, regenerative bidirectional systems are becoming increasingly attractive from both operational and environmental perspectives.

Microgrids Are Becoming Critical Infrastructure

Microgrids are no longer viewed as niche backup systems. They are increasingly becoming critical infrastructure for data centers, industrial facilities, hospitals, military installations, and smart cities.

According to Reuters, microgrid deployment is accelerating across the United States as utilities, technology companies, and energy developers seek more resilient and flexible power systems.

Several factors are driving this growth:

Increasing grid instability

Extreme weather events

Rising electricity demand

AI data center expansion

Renewable energy adoption

Energy security concerns

Microgrids rely heavily on sophisticated power electronics and intelligent energy management systems. Bidirectional DC power supplies are crucial for testing these complex systems under realistic operating conditions.

Modern microgrid testing often involves:

Dynamic load simulation

Grid islanding scenarios

Renewable intermittency testing

Battery dispatch simulation

Power quality analysis

Harmonic evaluation

Voltage and frequency stabilization testing

The increasing complexity of these systems requires highly programmable and responsive test equipment.

The Role of Smart Power Electronics

As microgrids and energy storage systems become more advanced, power electronics are emerging as the true intelligence layer of modern energy infrastructure.

Industry discussions increasingly emphasize that the future of grid resilience depends heavily on advanced power conversion technologies, fault tolerance, harmonic control, and intelligent inverter systems.

This is driving innovation in:

Wide-bandgap semiconductors

Silicon carbide (SiC) technologies

Gallium nitride (GaN) power devices

High-frequency switching architectures

AI-assisted power management

Digital power control systems

Bidirectional DC power supplies are essential tools for validating these next-generation power electronics technologies before they are deployed into mission-critical energy systems.

Digitalization and Automated Testing

The future of energy infrastructure is increasingly digital, automated, and software-defined.

Modern bidirectional power systems now support:

Ethernet and LAN communication

SCPI programming

Cloud monitoring

Real-time diagnostics

Automated test sequencing

Data logging and analytics

Remote operation

These features allow engineers to integrate bidirectional power supplies directly into automated test systems for high-volume manufacturing and advanced research environments.

As Industry 4.0 adoption grows, digitally connected power testing systems will become even more important.

The Future of Bidirectional Power Technology

The rise of renewable energy, battery storage, electric vehicles, and microgrids is fundamentally reshaping how electricity is generated, stored, distributed, and consumed.

In this new energy ecosystem, electricity no longer flows in a single direction. Energy constantly moves between batteries, vehicles, renewable generators, buildings, and the grid itself. Bidirectional DC power supplies are becoming indispensable because they mirror this new reality.

In the coming years, bidirectional power technologies will continue evolving toward:

Higher power density

Faster transient response

Greater regenerative efficiency

Smarter digital control

AI-assisted diagnostics

Enhanced grid simulation

Fully automated testing environments

The report US Microgrid Market is projected to grow from USD 11.33 billion in 2025 to USD 24.82 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 17.0% during the forecast period.

The US microgrid market is driven by increasing investments in renewable energy sources and grid modernization initiatives aimed at enhancing energy security and reliability. The transition toward sustainable energy systems is further strengthening the role of microgrids in providing resilience against power outages and supporting critical infrastructure. Advancements in digital optimization technologies and artificial intelligence-based energy management systems are improving operational efficiency and enabling better system control. The increasing integration of electric vehicle charging infrastructure and advancements in renewable energy integration are expected to enhance system efficiency and create growth opportunities in the US microgrid market.

Download PDF Brochure @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=8273226

The remote areas segment is expected to witness the highest growth rate in the US microgrid market between 2025 and 2030.

The US microgrid market is segmented into remote areas, commercial & industrial buildings, healthcare facilities, military facilities, institutes & campuses, utilities, and government buildings. Among these, the remote areas segment is expected to record strong growth due to the increasing need to provide reliable and cost-effective power supply in off-grid and underserved regions. Microgrid deployment in these areas reduces dependence on conventional grid infrastructure and enhances energy independence in geographically isolated locations.

The growing adoption of renewable energy-based microgrids, coupled with energy storage integration, is improving system reliability and operational efficiency in remote deployments. Additionally, rising investments in rural electrification initiatives and resilience-focused energy infrastructure are further supporting segmental growth. Increasing demand for sustainable and decentralized energy solutions is expected to continue driving the expansion of the remote areas segment over the forecast period.

During the forecast period, the grid-connected segment is expected to maintain its dominant position in the US microgrid market.

The market comprises both grid-connected and off-grid microgrids, with grid-connected solutions continuing to lead due to their extensive adoption across commercial, industrial, and institutional applications. The increasing need for grid resilience, efficient energy management, and integration of distributed energy resources (DERs), including solar PV and energy storage systems, is expected to drive sustained demand for grid-connected microgrids.

These systems are anticipated to play a critical role in enabling bidirectional power flow, supporting peak load management, and enhancing overall grid stability, particularly as utilities modernize aging infrastructure. Growing investments in smart grid technologies, digital energy management platforms, and electric vehicle charging infrastructure are expected to accelerate segment growth.

The key players in the US microgrid market include Schneider Electric (France), Siemens (Germany), ABB (Switzerland), GE Vernova (US), and Hitachi Energy Ltd. (Switzerland), which are focusing on expanding their microgrid portfolios through integrated solutions, digital platforms, and strategic partnerships.

Other notable players, such as Bloom Energy (US) and Eaton (US), are also strengthening their presence in distributed energy and microgrid deployments.