Advocacy groups pitch solar microgrids as New Orleans power backups

Hurricane Francine left about 400,000 Louisianians without power. Advocates hope a distributed power grid could help avoid power outages during storms and reduce carbon emissions. (John Gray/Verite News)

New Orleans hopes to see fewer power outages during storms and heat waves with an investment in a new energy generation system.

The New Orleans City Council voted Wednesday to consider proposals for a distributed power grid throughout New Orleans. Individual generators of power, such as solar panels on a house, can be connected to each other to form a grid that sources its power from multiple sources distributed across the city.

Advocacy groups Together New Orleans and the Alliance for Affordable Energy want the city to invest up to $32 million to buy batteries for homes and community centers to create a virtual power plant. It would consist of technologies such as solar panels and connected batteries at a home or business that can either power individual structures or be part of a small-scale power grid.

These microgrids can then be strung together to create a virtual power plant that collects the generated energy and ties it back into the main grid. The virtual power plant acts like a thread, sewing together the patchwork quilt of power generation and automatically balancing how much power needs to be saved during times of high usage, such as heat waves, to prevent the main grid from becoming overburdened.

“Although it will take several months to reach final approval, we are pleased that this effort promises to be one of the fastest rollouts of community resilience and storm preparedness investment programs in the country,” said Jesse George, New Orleans policy director for the Alliance for Affordable Energy.

Typically overseen by local utility companies, a virtual power plant can also leverage technologies that “smartly control flexible loads and shift their operation time from peak to off-peak hours,” according to a study analyzing the adoption of virtual power plants.

It could use technology such as a smart thermostat to pre-cool homes in anticipation of high-use times – like early to late afternoon in the summer – to prevent the grid from becoming overtaxed when everyone cranks up their ACs.

This method of distributing power can help incorporate more renewable energy sources into the power grid, reducing carbon emissions and helping cities inch closer to climate goals, proponents say.

The city dollars Together New Orleans and the Alliance for Affordable Energy seeks would leverage federal clean energy funding to reduce costs for home and business owners who want to install solar panels and batteries as part of a microgrid.

Together New Orleans also spearheaded the creation of 10 community “lighthouses” that are solar-powered hubs where people can seek AC and recharge devices during natural disaster-related outages.

“Together New Orleans is pleased to see the Council taking this important first step to efficiently, cost-effectively and quickly boost distributed resilience on our fragile grid,” Together New Orleans organizer Broderick Bagert said