New York: Demand Energy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Enel Green Power North America, Inc., announced April 11 that construction work has begun on the company’s renewable-energy-plus-storage microgrid at Marcus Garvey Village, a mixed-income apartment complex in New York City owned by L+M Development Partners.
The project achieves several significant milestones for New York City’s power grid:
• First lithium-ion batteries approved for use in a behind-the-meter multi-family building application
• First renewable-energy-plus-storage microgrid in an affordable housing development
• First microgrid deployed under Con Edison’s Brooklyn-Queens Demand Management Program.
The Marcus Garvey microgrid consists of a 400 kW solar PV system and 400 kW fuel cell, supported by 300 kW / 1.2 MWh lithium-ion batteries and controlled by Demand Energy’s Distributed Energy Network Operating System (DEN.OS™), which optimizes how these resources interact and perform. The system will reduce the property’s power consumption by managing the generation and storage of renewable energy to save money through demand charge reduction. It will also provide resiliency during an outage, lower operational cost, deliver essential load relief for Con Edison, and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
A key technical aspect of the project is the ability of DEN.OS to ensure that the housing development self-consumes any energy it generates, without exporting to the grid. That capability directly aligns with Con Edison’s Brooklyn-Queens Demand Management (BQDM) requirements, which facilitated the interconnection and permitting process.
In September 2016, New York established an energy storage goal of 100 MWh by 2020, along with an expanded solar target of 1,000 megawatts by 2030. Storage is expected to play a key role in meeting the city’s plans to cut greenhouse gases by 80 percent by 2050.