Under the contract, Alstom will research and design a community microgrid system in partnership with the Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) and Philadelphia Industrial Development (PIDC).
Alstom Grid North America president Michael Atkinson said: "This microgrid demonstration is in line with the DOE’s national objective to improve grid resiliency, reduce emissions and increase energy efficiency, while protecting critical infrastructure.
PIDC Navy Yard Management & Development senior vice president Will Agate said: "PIDC is excited to continue the work on The Navy Yard’s microgrid collaboratively with DOE and our partners at Alstom and PWD.
The Microgrid Research Development and System Design (RD&D) project aims to meet the requirement in distributed energy resources which include renewables, distributed generation, demand response and energy storage, as well as to achieving enhanced grid resiliency.
Alstom will provide a comprehensive end-to-end Microgrid Controller System (MGCS) prototype, which includes microgrid islanding, synchronization and reconnection, protection, voltage frequency, power quality management and system resiliency to PWD and PIDC, using portions of the former Philadelphia Navy Yard.
The project implementation team comprises Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), California Institute of Energy and Environment (CIEE) and Washington State University (WSU) as the R&D partners while Burns Group will serve as construction design engineering partner.
Alstom is one of seven companies to secure receive the US DOE’s microgrid funding as part of US President Obama’s Climate Action Plan and complies with the Administration’s aim to enhance the resiliency of the nation’s energy grid.
