Advanced microgrid serves as a learning lab

Source: · Schneider Electric · | March, 2019

Overview

Dedicated to environmental ethics, the Fox Cities Environmental Learning Center at Bubolz Nature Preserve advanced its mission significantly in 2018 when it became home to one of the world’s most sophisticated microgrids. The microgrid operates as a learning lab for the 100,000+ visitors expected at the Appleton, Wisconsin, preserve each year.

But that’s just the start.

The sophisticated energy array, provided and supported by Faith Technologies and Schneider Electric, also offers an opportunity for important research and development. It demonstrates and tests the latest in microgrid operations and will pass the knowledge on to the growing clean energy industry and its customers.

The 45-year-old nature preserve is no stranger to clean energy. In 1981 — well before today’s sustainability revolution — Bubolz was experimenting with solar, wind, and geothermal to energize what was then an earth center at the site. More recently, the nonprofit preserve built a new 18,000 square foot, highly efficient lodge which the microgrid will energize by way of solar photovoltaics, energy storage, a fuel cell, microturbine, and a natural gas generator.

The energy project is designed to:

• Reduce and even eliminate high energy costs to the nonprofit organization

• Modernize the facility

• Better educate current and future generations about sustainability

• Gain resilience via optional island mode

The microgrid provides yet another good reason to visit the center, which offers a wide range of activities from school field trips to birding to dogsledding on its 700 acres. Students visiting the Nature Center already learn about abiotics, phenology, and echolocation. Now they have the opportunity to understand how a microgrid can help them take control of their energy future and achieve high levels of sustainability, reliability, and efficiency.