“Smart City Solutions, The Microgrid Business Case Missing Component “

Microgrids have been deployed across the world. However, the lack of a viable business case has been defined as a significant barrier to commercializing the microgrid solution. Optimally sizing of the microgrid distributed energy resources (DERs) using more granular data and offering additional services are the two major solutions to address this barrier.

Smart City, as a novel tool generating granular data of the cities’ legacy physical infrastructure systems, requires a hierarchal control and management system. Big data generated by Smart City promotes the optimal design and efficient operation of the microgrid DERs, which leads to the microgrid solution CAPEX and OPEX reduction. Additionally, the microgrid controller can be used as the Smart City hierarchal control and management system resulting in generating more revenue and savings presented by the microgrid solution.

“Mehdi Ganji is IEEE Smart City R&D Committee Chair and leads Willdan’s Smart Cities Team, expanding the knowledge of smart grid across the company—with emphasis on power system grid resilience, reliability, and decarbonization. Dr. Ganji has been the Principal Investigator of a number of microgrid projects in the State of New York (NY PRIZE), Massachusetts, and California. Currently, he is leading the Smart Campus project in Ankara, Turkey. As an executive advisor to Galvin Center for Electricity Innovation at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, he has worked on more than 30 smart grid research and implementation projects focused on the development of microgrid planning and operation applications for different market segments, and identification of the various microgrid business models. His areas of interest include microgrid applications at untapped market segments, data analytics and its role in Smart Cities applications, electric vehicle integration, transactive energy, and energy management systems. He has been actively engaged in several technical and industrial working groups such as IEEE1547, IEEE2030.7&8 and the State of California Microgrid Commercialization Roadmap and Vehicle Grid Integration.