A Florida-based community, powered by a microgrid, withstood Hurricane Ian last year. Other homes nearby were less lucky, having power outages. But the storm failed to cut the electricity to 37 homes in Tampa that have a utility-owned, residential community microgrid.
Houses in the Medley at Southshore Bay development are kitted-out with a BlockEnergy BlockBox outside. This is part of a renewable energy and battery storage system. An upgraded version of the equipment – available next year – will feature EV charging. This system supplements electricity from the local grid. It is designed to be storm-resilient, but until recently had not faced this challenge.
Making landfall with hurricane-force winds, storm Ian left 2.2 million local people without power. However, the neighborhood powered by the BlockEnergy System remained fully functional. The battery storage powered each property until the grid connection was restored.
The BlockEnergy System provides a potential solution to the challenge of modernizing the electric utility grid, promising to help address the demands placed on local utilities to provide infrastructure for the growing adoption of electric vehicles while rapidly replacing fossil fuel generation with renewable resources.
This technology setup is a utility-focused, front-of-the-meter, distributed renewable energy platform for new build communities of all sizes. It is owned, operated and maintained by the local utility. The infrastructure is configured to be a plug-and-play energy system. Using a simple kit of parts, BlockEnergy is installed by local utilities as a capital asset to deliver the secure and reliable power. Scalable, storm-resilient and able to interoperate seamlessly with the local grid when needed, BlockEnergy puts rooftop solar, energy storage and smart distributed controls into new communities of all sizes. These homes are joined together in a network, creating self-sustaining BlockLoops, able to independently power homes without disruption.
This community power network looks to be very resilient and will be in demand in areas that are seeing increasingly disruptive weather in the future.