Schneider Electric: EcoStruxure Microgrid Flex Empowers Businesses to Achieve Resilience and a Path to Net Zero
June 6, 2023
Schneider Electric has recently announced EcoStruxure Microgrid Flex, an industry-first, innovative standardized microgrid solution designed to significantly reduce project timeline across the journey, delivering a greater return on investment for the system.
With distributed energy resources projected to account for 40% of US electricity generation by 2050, the demand for microgrids is growing to meet these needs. Microgrid systems currently require a sizeable sum of engineering hours and intense attention to the configuration, planning and deployment of the system.
EcoStruxure Microgrid Flex expedites the completion of microgrid system projects from specification to design and build in months instead of years. It has a profoundly positive impact on customer return on investment, as it dramatically reduces the number of engineering hours required, resulting in significant cost savings. “By producing electricity with renewable resources, microgrids drive increased sustainability, electrification and resiliency for our customers and across the U.S.,” asserted Annette Clayton, CEO, Schneider Electric North America. “This groundbreaking standardized microgrid solution accelerates decarbonization and market adoption, allowing more facilities to leverage renewables and manage costs through energy source optimization,” Clayton continued.
“Our new EcoStruxure Microgrid Flex empowers businesses to take the future of sustainability into their own hands with a solution that considerably reduces downtime, greenhouse gas emissions and energy waste,” said Bala Vinayagam, SVP, Microgrid Line of Business at Schneider Electric. “And as a configured-to-order offer, customers will achieve greater optimization of on-site renewables connected to the microgrid.”
Once commissioned, the solution is optimized through a data-as-a-service model where the microgrid’s data plugs into the AI-powered AutoGrid VPP (Virtual Power Plant) platform. This solution can also plug into a third-party VPP network, DERMS (Distributed Energy Resource Management System), or directly with Schneider Electric’s microgrid software and analytics suite.
“We are very excited to be one of the first partners working with Schneider Electric to deliver EcoStruxure Microgrid Flex to the market,” said Ryan Goodman, Chief Executive Officer, Scale Microgrids. “We believe that utilizing Microgrid Flex will enable us to deliver groundbreaking distributed energy systems to our customers with unprecedented speed and efficiency.”
EcoStruxure Microgrid Flex’s complete, simple, and packaged solution includes:
- Schneider Electric Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) – integrated with inverters, batteries, cooling, switchgear, output transformer, safety features & controls
- Advanced Software and Analytics – complete software and tools for full lifecycle including assessment, feasibility, design, operating and optimizing.
- Energy Control Center – the Energy Control Center (ECC) is a single intelligent, pre-engineered and pre-tested DER and control system that helps optimize resources and ensures resilience.
- Services for simple and easy operating, maintaining, and optimizing of the microgrid
EcoStruxure Microgrid Flex helps businesses meet their energy strategy needs, including applications for small and medium markets, including hotels, retail, food & beverage, healthcare, government and more.
The solution will be available to order in the United States in the second quarter of 2023.
