ABB technology and its open innovation strategy are driving deployment of microgrids on a global scale. The company’s digital portfolio is providing safe, smart and sustainable solutions for a world that needs a major shift toward renewables to achieve global annual greenhouse gas reductions of 7.6% over the next decade.
Microgrids leverage wind, solar, energy storage systems and electric vehicles – and make power systems more resilient, used increasingly to protect facilities against extreme weather events, energy security risks, and major shifts in power demand. Forecasts predict strong double-digit annual growth for microgrids over the coming decade, increasing from less than 5GW to more than 20GW of installed capacity worldwide. Annual investment is forecast to reach around $40 billion by the end of the next decade.
ABB Smart Power’s microgrid technologies and innovation collaborations with other solution providers are supporting this growth by making it easier for system consultants and integrators to get energy sources up and running 24/7. Modular and scalable, ABB’s microgrid solutions make integration simpler for commercial buildings, industries, utility communities and marine vessels.
ABB supplies core technologies for microgrid architectures, from smart circuit breakers to load management algorithms and digital platforms that enable energy and asset monitoring. The ABB AbilityTM digital platform enables microgrids to aggregate diverse and distributed energy resources and optimize them into nimble systems, able to adapt in real time to the electrical distribution changes.
“Microgrids are the energy architecture of the future, powering the sustainable energy revolution,” says Fabio Monachesi, ABB’s Global Microgrid Applications Leader. “We believe modular technologies will play an essential role in making microgrids simpler to build. Solution blocks that leverage digitalization are the best way to overcome the current engineering and system integration challenges and to make sustainable energy supplies more resilient.”
ABB Smart Power has set out its vision for faster microgrid deployment and has produced a detailed whitepaper in cooperation with Guidehouse Inc: “How modular solutions accelerate worldwide microgrid and virtual power plant (VPP) opportunities”.
The latest advance from ABB’s innovation collaborations is a set of modular microgrid solutions developed in cooperation with power grid control expert DEIF of Denmark. Already working with a number of system integrators, the ABB-DEIF solution is the subject of a webinar on February 3rd 2021.
The intelligent concept fully integrates the microgrid controllers and the inverter, with a complete range of metering, connectivity and load management algorithms embedded in the circuit breakers.
“An integrated microgrid is a better microgrid,” says DEIF’s Vice President for Strategic Key Accounts, Claus T. Larsen. “The scalable, modular plug-and-play controller concept we have developed with ABB is a highly intelligent, highly flexible solution that satisfies a huge range of customer requirements – from simple off-grid to advanced plant management systems.”
For simpler applications, the modular solution can be connected to any existing plant without retrofitting the existing system. For fully integrated applications, the solution improves grid stability and reliability, prioritizes renewables and maximizes feed-in tariff revenues, significantly improving OPEX.
For solar, battery, grid and genset applications, there are a broad range of benefits. As the solution can connect and control inverters and battery management systems, investment costs are lower, while its plug & play concept also delivers microgrid project cost estimated reductions up to 10%.
“ABB is open to more cooperation opportunities like this,” says Monachesi. “Energy distribution must continue to evolve and respond to the major changes in our economies and the urgent need for climate action. The technology and market partnership ecosystem is essential.”
To find out how this modular solution could benefit your next microgrid project, register now for the webinar.
