The need for resilient health care facilities — via microgrids — on tribal lands is hiding in plain sight, said Thomas Tighe, president and CEO of Direct Relief, a humanitarian aid organization.

 “A lot of people think about power, but those who think about health don’t think about power,” he said. “Resilient power is a thing of value but the payoff may not seem compelling.”

But if a hurricane takes out power for many months or even years, many people likely will have no access to health care or electricity to power medical devices and refrigerate vaccines and medications. Often the value of resilient power to address these challenges isn’t included in cost-benefit analyses.

“It’s hard not to see its benefit once you’ve seen the consequences,” Tighe said.  

To address the often overlooked need for resilient health care facilities on tribal lands, Direct Relief is providing $10 million in grants for solar and storage microgrids that will serve tribal communities that experience frequent power outages. The grants are being offered through Direct Relief’s Power for Health  initiative, which aims to help ensure the U.S. nonprofit health care safety net is more resilient and better equipped to operate through disaster-caused blackouts.

A total eclipse on Monday will mean the loss of thousands of megawatt-hours of solar generation across portions of the United States — likely impacting more generation than in any previous solar eclipse, experts say.

Grid operators across the nation have been preparing for months and say they can navigate the event with no impact to reliability. But they also say their efforts are complicated by uncertain weather outlooks, and eclipse-related behavioral changes that make forecasting energy demand difficult.

While the “path of totality” will pass over just a portion of the solar facilities in the U.S., and cloud cover will impact the extent of lost production, “the effects of this eclipse will be significant on solar generation across the country,” said Solcast lead data scientist Hugh Cutcher. The company offers solar irradiance data and forecasting technology.

Solcast estimates that across all U.S. grids, maximum generation losses over the span of the eclipse could be up to 39.9 GWh, with about 16.2 GWh of the loss from rooftop solar. 

The microgrid industry has gained considerable momentum in recent years, however, microgrid customers still face a number of challenges that must be overcome for the industry to maintain, or even accelerate, that momentum through 2024 and beyond.

That’s what we heard in talking to two microgrid executives whose companies will participate in Microgrid Knowledge’s upcoming annual conference, Microgrid 2024: The Revolution in Energy, April 22-24, in Baltimore, Maryland.

For years, utilities have grappled with how to handle the ever-growing number of solar and battery systems trying to connect to the lower-voltage grids that deliver power to customers. That’s especially true for midsize projects like, say, a solar array that might adorn the roof of a multiunit apartment complex or a community-solar project that generates power shared by hundreds of dispersed customers.

On the one hand, utilities have eyed such projects warily, fearing that if the solar panels or batteries inject too much power onto local circuits at moments when electricity demand is low, it might cause grid instability or safety problems. As a result, utilities have thrown up barriers that have delayed or halted grid connections.

But as advocates have been pointing out for over a decade, these distributed solar and battery resources can also be enormous assets: By holding back power when the grid doesn’t need it, and then sharing their extra power during periods of high demand, they can help alleviate grid strains and lower the cost of keeping the grid running for everyone.

It’s taken California regulators, utilities and clean-energy advocates nearly four years to hash out these conflicting ideas. But in mid-March, the California Public Utilities Commission approved new interconnection rules that take into account how, with the right structures in place, solar and solar-plus-battery systems can be more help than hazard to California’s overworked grid.

After a series of devastating hurricanes and an earthquake left its electric grid in shambles with transmission and distribution infrastructure destroyed, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico made a decision that would completely overhaul the way it generates and delivers electricity.

With the 2019 passage of the Puerto Rico Energy Public Policy Act, also known as Act 17, the Puerto Rico Legislature set the U.S. territory on a path to meet 100% of its electricity needs with renewable energy by 2050.

The legislature set several milestones along the path to 2050, including achieving 40% renewables by 2025, phasing out coal-fired generation by 2028 and generating 60% of power needs with renewables by 2040.

This marks a significant shift away from a centralized approach to power, which is inefficient because the fossil fuels required to operate the grid have to be imported. 

To help Puerto Rico identify pathways to reach these lofty goals, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and experts from six national laboratories launched a two-year study that included significant engagement with local stakeholders.

The results show there are three potential paths Puerto Rico can take to become 100% reliant on renewable energy over the next two and a half decades.

The Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) recognizes the need for peer exchange and expert guidance on AI. At February’s RE+ Northeast conference in Boston, SEPA’s Emerging Technology team hosted a panel discussion on the current role and value of one form of AI – machine learning – for grid modernization in the Northeastern US. Thank you to Alexina Jackson with the AES Corporation, Sreedhar Sistu with Schneider Electric, David Stuebe with Camus Energy, and Mark Waclawiak with Avangrid for making the trip to Boston to join this panel. About half of our audience members said they already use AI in their work, but all leaned in close to learn from these experts. It was exciting to hear how utility operators, technology firms, and others are innovating to use AI here and now– as well as what to expect from this fledgling technology as its full capabilities unfold.

We learned that AI and machine learning are a good fit for many of the changes we need to make to optimize the electricity grid. This includes making more refined predictions about EV adoption, providing sharper and earlier visibility into where tree trimming and asset maintenance are needed the most, calculating new dynamic line ratings to maximize existing transmission corridors, and more. Panelists shared a consensus agreement that all AI/ML applications still require humans to think critically about data inputs and model design, and remain in the loop to oversee their use, take action based on the results, and monitor and calibrate performance. With several years of results coming in, panelists also explained how they’re measuring outcomes of AI investment today and why it is poised to help utilities develop innovative approaches for delivering safe, reliable, affordable, and low-carbon electricity to their customers. This blog captures what we learned from the four experts at RE+ Northeast.

There is little question that hydrogen fuel cells hold a lot of promise for data center power and general power generation for industrial use.

But as we have mentioned before, the availability of hydrogen is dependent on a number of factors, not the least of which is hydrogen generation and distribution.

Plug Power, which started making waves in 2022 when it built a 3 MW hydrogen powered generation system for Microsoft, believes that we are on the cusp of seeing a more general use of hydrogen fuel cells for adding power to the grid.

Although, as Plug Power CEO Andrew Marsh said, “I don’t think it’s a 2024 event. I think it could be a late 2025 event where you start seeing some deployments at scale.”

But Marsh isn’t referring to the concept of having hydrogen power on-site for backup power.

He expects customers to be able to do peak load shaving, making use of the power generation capability as a regular part of a site’s power generation plan.

And with the ongoing efforts to make data centers better citizens of the power grid, this on-site power generation capability to not only backstop, but also supplement the grid, should find a lot of support in the industry.

The U.K. government has formally agreed to work with the U.S. in developing tests for advanced artificial intelligence models. A Memorandum of Understanding, which is a non-legally binding agreement, was signed on April 1, 2024 by the U.K. Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan and U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

Both countries will now “align their scientific approaches” and work together to “accelerate and rapidly iterate robust suites of evaluations for AI models, systems, and agents.” This action is being taken to uphold the commitments established at the first global AI Safety Summit last November, where governments from around the world accepted their role in safety testing the next generation of AI models.

With the MoU, the U.K. and U.S. have agreed how they will build a common approach to AI safety testing and share their developments with each other. Specifically, this will involve:

• Developing a shared process to evaluate the safety of AI models.
• Performing at least one joint testing exercise on a publicly accessible model.
• Collaborating on technical AI safety research, both to advance the collective knowledge of AI models and to ensure any new policies are aligned.
• Exchanging personnel between respective institutes.
• Sharing information on all activities undertaken at the respective institutes.
• Working with other governments on developing AI standards, including safety.

Fashion brands, big and small, have made ambitious, public commitments to creating more sustainable apparel by 2030. But keeping pace with their decarbonization commitments has been a challenge across the industry.

About two-thirds of brands, according to a new McKinsey analysis, are behind on their own decarbonization schedules, and 40 percent have seen their emissions output increase since making their sustainability commitments.

Today, the global fashion industry accounts for an estimated 3 to 8 percent of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the industry’s emissions are expected to increase by about 30 percent by 2030 if no further action is taken.¹ There’s a particular sense of urgency for fashion to abate emissions as quickly as possible, since several countries that are likely to experience the greatest devastation from climate change are central to fashion’s value chain. Intense and frequent weather-related events occur in primary manufacturing countries—such as Bangladesh, China, India, and Vietnam—which export an estimated $65 billion worth of appare.

Accelerating abatement without affecting the industry is achievable. In fact, it could be more affordable than fashion executives might think. Our research shows that most fashion brands could reduce their GHG emissions by more than 60 percent for less than 1 to 2 percent of their revenues. (This excludes levers related to reselling, renting, and repairing fashion, which would reduce a brand’s emissions intensity significantly but also be dependent on consumer behavior shifts.)

In the following article, we have identified six challenges that if overcome would see the fashion industry making more progress in reducing its GHG emissions, as well as six cost-effective actions that can help accelerate decarbonization.

Whenever you hear security advice, topping the list of suggestions usually is multifactor authentication. Whether it’s securing an application, protecting a device, or logging into an account, MFA is highly recommended. Its rise in prominence comes from industry best practices or security requirements that demand its use to reduce the risk of potential breaches.

MFA provides a critical layer of defense within security, and boosts protection against the risk of unauthorized access, especially if passwords alone are the only defense layer in place. Given how quick and simple it can take to crack and breakthrough passwords, this is insufficient as a single source of security.

While MFA is still a robust safeguard, its efficacy can be undermined if accompanied by a weak or compromised password, which makes it highly vulnerable to being hacked and causing breaches. Manufacturing IT and OT operators must be wary of the fact that MFA isn’t a silver bullet for bad passwords—just like there isn’t the holy grail security solution on the market.

Unfortunately, MFA security can be bypassed, and this occurs in a number of ways—and often. As we explore these techniques, businesses need to be vigilant on the key element that multifactor authentication is designed to add protection for: passwords.