GE Working on Microgrid Research Project to Improve Grid Reliability in Upstate New York

GE along with National Grid, DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Clarkson University recently announced a partnership on a research project to improve the reliability and resiliency of electricity delivery in northern New York.
Dec. 11, 2014

GE Global Research and GE Energy Consulting, along with National Grid, DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Clarkson University recently announced a partnership on a research project to improve the reliability and resiliency of electricity delivery in northern New York. The focus area will be the Village of Potsdam, N.Y., near the Canadian border, which is prone to ice storms that could damage utility lines and other above-ground power infrastructure.

Fueled by a $1.2M grant from the DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE) and a $300,000 investment from GE, this project will allow for the development of an Enhanced Microgrid Control System (eMCS) designed to be the key element in keeping the town’s electricity system up and running for several days should it become disconnected from the main power station. Details

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Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.