[Editor’s note: this news post is by Frank Currie, Lead Faculty for the Distributed Energy Systems program at Santa Fe Community College (an MSL consortium Member). MSL contributed to the microgrid’s conceptual design.]

After an extensive design and development process, the “educational microgrid” at Santa Fe Community College (SFCC) – also known as the “greenhouse microgrid” and the “nanogrid” – was tested, validated, and commissioned for operation in July, 2021. The system comprises an 11,000 square-foot greenhouse, a classroom/lab building, and several distributed energy resources. As of late 2019, the greenhouse and the classroom were fed from the campus electrical distribution system and a small (12kW) PV tracking array that had been built near the greenhouse also fed into the campus distribution system. (more…)