Category: Uncategorized

Aug 25 2022 2Commentsby David Breecker

Update: Resilient El Rito project awarded engineering funds

Posted in Innovation, MSL news, partners, pilot projects, R&D, research, Uncategorized, workforce

Update 2/17/23: The Resilient El Rito community resilience microgrid demonstration project with Northern New Mexico College has awarded the engineering stage contract to Kit Carson Electric Coop. Work will begin presently, and we hope to move on to construction soon.

Update 8/25/22: The the NM Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Dept. (EMNRD) has recommended the Resilient El Rito project for engineering stage funding through its Grid Modernization program.  We expect this work could commence at the start of the new year, with Northern NM College as the primary recipient. In addition, EMNRD advises that they expect there will be federal funds available for the construction stage when we complete engineering, for which Kit Carson Electric Coop can compete. (more…)


May 25 2022 by David Breecker

You’re invited! MSL produces 3rd Annual NM Energy Summit

Posted in Innovation, MSL news, partners, R&D, research, Uncategorized, workforce

MSL is once again producing the annual NM Distributed Energy Summit (virtual). Please join us on Zoom for this important event:

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May 03 2022 by David Breecker

MSL Wins International Award

Posted in Innovation, MSL news, Uncategorized

MSL proudly announces that it has won the Silver Award in the Smart Grid pillar of the 2022 Energy Smart Communities Initiative Best Practices Awards Program of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.

The Energy Smart Communities Initiative (ESCI) was launched in November 2010 by the U.S. President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan within the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).  ESCI covers four main pillars—Smart Transport, Smart Buildings, Smart Grids, and Smart Jobs and Consumers—along with the cross-cutting examples of Low Carbon Model Towns. (more…)


Apr 13 2022 by David Breecker

MSL Teams with NMSU, NREL for DOE Proposal

Posted in MSL news, partners, R&D, research, Uncategorized

MSL has teamed with New Mexico State University and The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (an MSL Member) for a proposal to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) program, for a Building EPSCoR-State/DOE-National Laboratory Partnerships grant. The team’s proposal, “Building a federated learning framework for trustworthy and resilient energy internet of things (eIoT) infrastructure,” focuses on Federated Machine Learning (FML). It was selected by DOE at the pre-proposal stage for full proposal submission, and it approaches several FML-related aspects of smart grid data architectures and applications.

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Feb 23 2022 by David Breecker

Energy Sovereignty Videos Available

Posted in energy access, energy poverty, Innovation, MSL news, partners, Uncategorized

We are pleased to share two short videos produced by MSL’s  Energy Sovereignty Institute for the Indian Energy community. The first, “Tribal Energy Sovereignty,” features interviews with a variety of experts on tribal energy and its relationship to tribal sovereignty, featuring: Joseph Kunkel (Northern Cheyenne), Co-Director of ESI and Director of the Sustainable Native Communities Design Lab; Sherralyn Sneezer (Diné), PhD student at Rochester Institute of Technology; Stan Atcitty (Diné), Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, Sandia National Laboratories; and Tiana Suazo (Taos/Jemez Pueblo), Executive Director, Red Willow Center: (more…)


Feb 14 2022 by David Breecker

MSL Coordinates Industry Advisory Board

Posted in Innovation, MSL news, partners, R&D, research, Uncategorized

MSL is coordinating the newly-created Industry Advisory Board (IAB) for the NM SMART Grid Center, of which MSL is a primary partner and which is supported by a five-year NSF EPSCoR grant.

The IAB will provide feedback to the New Mexico EPSCoR Project Director, the SMART Grid Center Executive Committee, and the four individual research teams that are encompassed by the Center (SMART Grid architecture, networking, decision-support, and integration and implementation in physical testbeds like Mesa del Sol and Hardware-In-Loop environments). The feedback will focus on the relevance and value of the research performed by the four research teams to practical applications, suggestions for maximizing that value, and potential directions for sustaining research well beyond the remaining two years of the project.

We are pleased to announce these eight outstanding individuals and organizations who will serve on the IAB, and thank them for their participation:

Name Title Organization
Matt Cannon Research Scientist Shell New Energy Research and Technology
Jon Hawkins Associate Director, Innovation and Communication PNM Resources
Gary Oppedahl Vice President, Emerging Technologies Emera Technologies
Bill Kipnis Senior Business Development Manager Siemens Industry
Astrid Atkinson Chief Executive Officer Camus Energy
Bryan Hannegan Chief Executive Officer Holy Cross Energy
Peter Lilienthal Global Microgrid Lead UL
Luis Reyes Chief Executive Officer Kit Carson Electric Cooperative

Sep 17 2021 by David Breecker

Camus Energy Joins MSL Consortium

Posted in Innovation, MSL news, partners, pilot projects, R&D, research, Uncategorized

We are excited to announce that Camus Energy, a leader in advanced grid management software, has joined the MSL Member consortium. With a mission of “transforming the grid for a zero-carbon future,” Camus complements the MSL network’s strengths in research centers, utilities, and NGOs with its unparalleled software engineering skills and distributed systems expertise, developed over decades of senior network engineering management experience at ultra-high-performance technology companies such as Google. (more…)


Jul 01 2021 by David Breecker

You’re Invited! Distributed Energy Summit ’21

Posted in Innovation, MSL news, partners, R&D, research, Uncategorized, workforce

MSL is proud to be producing this event for the NM SMART Grid Center, and we would like to invite all those interested to attend what promises to be a stimulating series of discussions on NM’s clean energy transition and its broader implications.

We hope you can join us! (more…)


May 11 2021 by David Breecker

Energy Sovereignty Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology Welcome PhD Student

Posted in energy access, energy poverty, MSL news, partners, R&D, research, Uncategorized

We are delighted to announce that Sherralyn Sneezer (Navajo/Dine) has been selected from a highly competitive field of applicants as our first PhD student in energy sovereignty research topics, via MSL’s  Energy Sovereignty Institute and its partnership with the Golisano Institute for Sustainability at Rochester Institute of Technology. Sherralyn’s research will be supervised by Dr. Nathan Williams, an Assistant Professor at the Golisano Institute, in collaboration with MSL.
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Apr 23 2021 by David Breecker

Distributed Energy Summit set for July ’21

Posted in Uncategorized
MSL is again developing and producing the second annual Virtual Distributed Energy Summit for the NM EPSCoR SMART Grid Center, hosted by Santa Fe Community College’s Smart and Microgrid Training Center.  This year’s event will take place on July 29 and 30, 2021 and its theme takes a holistic view of all the recent relevant activity in our state, under the rubric of:
Distributed Energy Summit ’21:
MODERNIZING NM ENERGYWebinars | New Mexico EPSCoR
Economy | Technology | Workforce

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