Sean Esterly: Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining us on today during Veterans Day. And just like to start off by thanking anyone that has served for your service. We are going to get started here with our webinar. And once this—yep, there we go. Contact online >>
Sean Esterly: Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining us on today during Veterans Day. And just like to start off by thanking anyone that has served for your service. We are going to get started here with our webinar. And once this—yep, there we go.
All right, so yeah, thank you for joining us for our "Community Microgrid Assistance Partnership" overview webinar. This program, also known as C-MAP. And my name is Sean Esterly. Kicking things off here, I''m a project manager with NREL and helping to support the C-MAP program.
A couple housekeeping items for you as we go to the next slide. So just some Zoom tips for you. If you''re having any trouble hearing anything, make sure you check your audio settings first. If you''re having any connectivity issues, you can always try a different browser. You can try quickly logging out and back in.
Or feel free to send a chat to us, and we can try to walk you through how to fix that. You''ll notice at the bottom you have two options for interacting with us. There is a chat feature that''s going to be for any directions, like how to fix audio if you''re having issues, and any discussion.
We do have a separate Q&A panel. And would ask that if you have any questions you''d like to submit to us, please use that Q&A panel. We''re going to be monitoring that very closely. And we''ll address those questions during the Q&A session.
As you join, please feel free to enter your name, location, and organization into the chat. Love to hear who''s joining, where you''re joining from, and who you''re representing. Also, there is a full link for the request for proposals or RFPs on the C-MAP website.
We will be dropping that link into the chat for everybody. So, you can click on that to access that page. We will also be copying all questions that do accidentally find their way into the chat, into the Q&A.
So, we will release that with the recording as well, so you''ll be able to go back and see what questions were asked and how we responded to those. And so, with that, I will turn it over to Ian Baring-Gould, my colleague here, for the next few slides.
Ian Baring-Gould: Great, thank you, everybody. Thank you so much for being here. I want to give a quick introduction to the program. Dan Ton was going to be able to do this but was called away. And so, I''m filling in for him.
So, we''ll do a quick overview of the C-MAP effort, what we''re doing. We''ll dive into the program a little bit to give you an overview of the program. And then Sean will be back to dive a little bit more into the specific solicitation that''s on the street.
And then Kyndall, at the end, will talk a little bit about the actual contracting, the application process, and some things to think about as you''re looking at pulling together a solicitation. So really quickly, for all of you, this will not be any new information. Isolated communities all over the United States but certainly in Alaska, Hawaii, the Southwest, Midwest, islands along the East Coast, anyplace where you''re not connected to the grid or are connected through a very tenuous grid, the energy costs are amazingly high.
And so, part of the microgrids effort within the Department of Energy under the Office of Electricity is really to look at how we can improve microgrid systems, especially for islanded and remote communities. And that''s really the big focus of this larger C-MAP effort. Going to the next slide, please. And one of the things that C-MAP is really trying to get into, is trying to address, is that we''ve had very piecemeal deployment of microgrid technology over the years.
There''s a number of systems that have been operating for—well, certainly, diesel power systems have been operating—microgrid diesel systems have been operating for the better part of 50 years in a lot of places. And there are a lot of innovations in regards to how diesel plants can operate. A lot of innovation has happened with putting renewables, energy storage, advanced controls on diesel plants to increase the efficiency.
But the communication from community to community about how to do this effectively so that all of the communities can move forwards in this development process hasn''t really happened. And then you have programs, like in Alaska, where the Alaska Energy Authority and the state of Alaska has put a lot of effort into expanding knowledge within the Alaskan community on how to improve microgrid power systems. That doesn''t necessarily translate very well. And the communication doesn''t get out to places outside of Alaska.
So, the whole C-MAP effort, this Community Microgrid Assistance Partnership, is really built around, how do we take the lessons that are being learned by the deployment of renewable technology, advanced diesel technology, advanced controls to be able to move all communities forward, not just the one that gets the grant? And so that''s a real focus of the efforts that we''re doing here. We''re talking about, in this case, contracts going out to communities to move that along.
But a whole element of this is how do we bring other communities around this community of practice so that everybody can move forwards at a faster pace? Next slide. And really focusing on the goals of the Office of Electricity microgrid program, you can see, these are the key bullet points. So, promote microgrids as a core solution for isolated communities, you already know it is a core solution.
But how do we improve resilience, reliability of that system? And then how can we take lessons from what all of you are doing and apply it, not only to other isolated communities in the United States, in the Arctic, around the world, but how do we take that learning and apply it to the grid system writ large, as we face climate change and climate disruption? Second bullet there is really working to decarbonize the electricity system.
And so that is, how do we run our system more efficiently? And a lot of expertise within the microgrid and the islanded remote area on how you operate power systems more efficiently. So, how can we take that learning and apply it nationally? And then decreasing the cost.
So, all of these things are core elements of the Office of Electricity program. And you can see how they reflect very cleanly into the work that we''re trying to do here, but the work in islanded and remote communities as well. Next slide. And so, I''m going to dive a little bit into this Community Microgrid Assistance Partnership. And again, it is a partnership. So, we have a number of different things that we''re going to be talking through, one of which is the solicitation that''s on the street right now. Next slide.
So, the partnership is what I—I mean, the name gives you an indication of what we''re trying to do. So, there are a lot of entities out here that are working to move forwards microgrid power systems.
And microgrid power systems, if successful, have a strong impact in communities. That''s what everybody is trying to do. And so how do we pull these entities together into a real partnership, where we can expand communication and learning across all of them?
And that''s really what the focus of the Office of Electricity is trying to do through this C-MAP activity. So, pulling all of these entities that are working in the space to show real outcomes in isolated and remote communities. Next slide.
The second part is this community solicitation, which is the focus of this talk right now. And that is providing money to communities to be able to do the development work that needs to happen to go from an idea, from a concept. We know we want to improve our microgrid. We have an understanding of how to do it. But then we need to get money to be able to do it? So, how do we bring communities together, providing them money to have communities look at how to solve this problem?
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