Intelligent automation and controls of power industry Microgrid solutions

Power is one of the fundamentals in developing and developed nations world-wide. Over 80% of the world´s population does not have reliable power. Without guaranteed power, nations quickly lose capabilities, efficiencies, and other critical infrastructure to their people and livelihood. The barrier for reliable power, in the past was the large investment requirement for centralized bulk generation. Additionally, the belief was that without large centralized power, the nation would not get efficiencies needed to provide reliable power. Across the world today, still many countries have inconsistent power and see rolling brown or black outs hourly or daily. At best developed countries have, reliable and secure power that is centrally managed through a bulk power grid and sometime governed by central government or large corporations. However with the advancement of distributed generation, substation automation, Microgrid (“MG”) control software, the industry is going through a fundamental change. The change is bringing on smaller Microgrid pockets, smaller generation due with less capital investment, and higher efficiency solutions that can compete neck and neck with large bulk generation. All of these items, while critical for the new “World Power Infrastructure” still lack some basic building blocks for the transformation to take its final shape. This paper will describe some of the concepts, barriers, lessons learned, and next steps to move from either unreliable Power structures or Central Bulk Power to Microgrid solutions with Distributed Automated Intelligent Power solutions.