Here comes the future: Bronzeville 'microgrid cluster' set to begin operating this year

By Lisa Cohn, Microgrid Knowledge

Commonwealth Edison’s (ComEd) Bronzeville Community Microgrid is a much-watched project that, for the first time in the US, creates a utility microgrid cluster, in this case by linking with the Illinois Institute of Technology’s (IIT) microgrid.

This means that during an outage, IIT’s microgrid and the Bronzeville microgrid can both island from the grid and share power. Or, if necessary, either party can cut back on its nonessential loads and share power with the other. And that’s a big deal in the power world.

“The key here is this is the first utility-scale demo of a utility microgrid and customer microgrid working together in a real community serving more than 1,000 residential, commercial and public institution locations — including a public housing complex — leveraging solar and storage,” said Alexi Paaso, director of distribution planning for ComEd. “The big thing for us is the clustering capability, showing the ability of two microgrids to work together.”

Most recently, ComEd passed an important...Continue reading on Microgrid Knowledge.