Vote: Solar Microgrid Project of the Year 2023

Here are the Solar Microgrid nominees for the 2023 Solar Builder Project of the Year Awards, sponsored by Aurora Solar. Seize opportunities to grow your solar business & your career today. Learn more here.

The form is at the bottom of the page. You are allowed to vote once per day from now until Saturday, Oct. 7 at midnight (EDT). (FYI: Our voting widget will let you vote more than once a day, but we filter these out in the back-end. Sorry, ballot stuffers). Winners will be announced and prominently featured in the Q4 issue of Solar Builder magazine and online in December.

Be sure to vote in every category!

Vote: Commercial and Industrial Projects of the Year
Vote: Residential Solar Project of the Year
Vote: Community Solar Project of the Year
Vote: Utility-Scale Solar Project of the Year

Gallaudet University

Washington, D.C. | 2.5 MW PV + 1.2 MW storage + 4.5 MW CHP

The microgrid and community solar system at Gallaudet University will work in parallel with the utility to power the campus and, in the event of a grid outage, will provide nearly all the university’s electricity needs, allowing campus operations to continue with minimal disruption. In addition, electricity generated by the solar arrays will be available to Washington, D.C., residents, nonprofit organizations and small businesses through the District of Columbia community solar program. Typically, on-site community solar projects connect to the grid directly, skipping the home or building’s power infrastructure entirely. However, in this case, the electricity production from the solar panels distributed across Gallaudet’s campus is being tracked and allocated for community solar credits, despite being connected to the university’s own electrical infrastructure. This “virtual front of the meter” approach let Scale develop the project without the need for extensive cabling costs that would be required to aggregate these many distributed solar systems and connect them directly to PEPCO’s grid. Instead, they simply connect to the nearest power panel and PEPCO tracks the output through sensors and software.

Developer(s): Scale Microgrids and Urban Ingenuity | EPC/Installer: New Columbia Solar | Modules: Qcells | Inverters: SMA | Storage: Tesla | Mounting/Racking: Aerocompact

Grand Canyon West

Peach Springs, Arizona | 884.52 kWdc PV + 2,145 kWh storage

This project for the Hualapai Tribe provides electricity for Grand Canyon West operations, which include the popular Grand Canyon Skywalk and other local attractions. The project included converting an existing microgrid solely powered by diesel generators to one powered primarily by solar and a battery energy storage system (BESS). The BESS serves as the grid-forming source, greatly reducing operational costs and increasing reliability of the microgrid. The solar and battery are expected to provide 50% of the needed energy for the entire site. The most extensive challenge with this project was developing a solution that interfaced with their existing generators and microgrid and establishing a complete micro-grid sequence of operations to ensure grid stability.

Developer(s): SOLON Corp. | EPC/Installer: SOLON Corporation | Modules: Boviet | Inverters: CPS America | Storage: Tesla | Mounting/Racking: APA Solar Racking

— Solar Builder magazine

[source: https://solarbuildermag.com/projects/vote-solar-microgrid-project-of-the-year-2023/]