News

MSL Coordinates Industry Advisory Board

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


SFCC Educational Microgrid Commissioned

[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…)



Camus Energy Joins MSL Consortium

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…)



Update: Resilient El Rito Project Applies for NM Grid Modernization Grant

Update: Resilient El Rito has completed its design phase, and based on the results of the Sandia National Laboratories modeling (see below) is now entering the engineering phase. The project partners have applied to the NM Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department for a Grid Modernization Pilot Project grant to cover engineering requirements, and all other prerequisites to achieve “shovel ready” status, in anticipation of availability of federal infrastructure funds in the near future. (more…)



You’re Invited! Distributed Energy Summit ’21

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…)



Energy Sovereignty Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology Welcome PhD Student

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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MSL Leads Resilient El Rito Project

MSL is leading the Resilient El Rito project, a proposed community resilience microgrid project in the  village of El Rito, NM, based on and around the El Rito campus of Northern New Mexico College (NNMC). The village is at the end of a single electric power distribution line that traverses mountainous terrain and wilderness, and is subject to reliability and resilience challenges common to rural isolated areas, including climate-induced wildfires and winds. The project is a collaboration between NNMC and Kit Carson Electric Cooperative (KCEC), the local electric utility, advised by Camus Energy (KCEC’s technology partner) and MSL. (more…)



Distributed Energy Summit set for July ’21

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

(more…)



City of Albuquerque, NM Joins MSL

MSL welcomes the City of Albuquerque (CABQ), NM to its Member consortium. CABQ is the first municipality to join MSL, and has distinguished itself in its programs and projects for sustainability, energy innovation, and grid modernization, including several planned municipal resilience microgrid projects.

Albuquerque (a winner of the American Climate Cities Challenge) is a leader in equitable, long term environmental solutions. The City is committed to use 100% renewable energy for municipal operations by 2025, and is on track to be one of the top ten U.S. cities powered by renewable energy. (more…)



Alaska Center for Energy & Power, Alaska Microgrid Group join MSL

MSL is pleased to announce that the Alaska Center for Energy and Power (ACEP) has joined its Member consortium. ACEP is an applied energy research program based at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The Center provides leadership in developing energy systems for islanded, non-integrated electric grids and their associated oil-based heating systems.

 

ACEP, which has a long and distinguished track record in energy innovation, is also joined in the MSL consortium by a new organization, the Alaska Microgrid Group (AMG). AMG is a non-profit established to support implementation of resilient, robust, and affordable local power systems around the world. (more…)