Resiliency

“The ability to adapt to changing conditions and withstand or recover rapidly from disruptions.“

Beginning with the first major “blackouts” in the nineteen sixties, the once ‘out of mind’ grid has shown new and significant vulnerability with increasing frequency, dimension and negative consequence. Both natural and made-made threats are taking their toll on the grid’s largely unprotected physical structure. Worse yet, its inherent construct makes it acutely vulnerable to rapid linear dynamic cascading failure, a fancy way of saying, “Mighty blackouts from little faults grow.”

A growing realization is that the intrinsic design of the grid, with its centralized power production and hub and spoke unidirectional transmission and distribution, underwrites many of its short comings.

The EMerge Alliance believes that microgrids, and particularly dc and/or hybrid AC/DC microgrids, embody the best possible solution to this dilemma. EMerge is creating standards for these ‘best of the best’ power technologies and topologies. Our goals regarding resiliency are simple:

• Enable a wider distribution of generation sources close to the loads
• Enable the greater use of renewable generation sources
• Enable storage to be integrated at all levels in the system
• Simplify integration of resources to improve reliability and lower cost
• Provide greater intelligence and power articulation at the grid edge
• Provide for multi-directional power flows and connectivity
• Create a mesh topology for self healing and real-time re-configuration
• Allow semi-autonomous transactional management of power flows

We believe that the majority of problems that plague the grid today are solvable without any significant new technology. And it’s a solution set that can build off the strengths of both AC and DC power forms, rather than their shortcomings. This eliminates the need to constantly put fixes in place to make things work reliably and economically.