Vote: Solar Microgrid Project of the Year 2022

SB POY 2022

Here are the Microgrid nominees for the 2022 Solar Builder Project of the Year Awards, sponsored by EagleView Technologies. Accurate data, virtual site assessments, and installation-ready designs will optimize your solar sales funnel and operations — learn more in this EagleView special report Breaking Down and Through Soft Costs.

The form is at the bottom of the page. You are allowed to vote once per day from now until Friday Oct. 14 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


Fifth Season

Pittsburgh | 160 kW + 250 kWh

Fifth Season microgrid

Fifth Season – based in Pittsburgh – is one of the key players in the growing vertical farming space. The indoor farm uses 97% less land and 95% less water than traditional farming. To ensure cheap, clean and reliable power, this modular microgrid sits behind the meter, utilizing a combination of solar PV panels, lithium ion batteries, and a natural gas generator outfitted with advanced emissions control technology. One of the unique technical features is that the solar panels used on this project have a peel and stick application that doesn’t require a frame or mounting equipment, making for extremely light construction, eliminating the need to make structural changes to existing roofs.

Developer: Scale Microgrid Solutions | EPC/Installer: Envinity | Modules: MerlinSolar | Inverters: SMA | Storage: Schneider Electric | Racking: None needed


Shungnak Community Microgrid

Shungnak, Ala. | 225 kW + 384 kWh

In the remote village of Shungnak, Alaska, residents have long relied on a diesel-based power plant system. Fuel costs soar above $8.25 a gallon, and the hum and exhaust smell of generators is constant. This solar + storage microgrid offers a promising, energy resilient future. Uniquely designed to enable a diesels off operation, the system automatically coordinates between solar and energy storage to ensure lowest cost power and communicates with the AVEC power plant on the best times to turn diesel generation off.  The microgrid is expected to save 25,000 gallons of fuel per year and an estimated $200,000 per year on fuel costs. This microgrid project is also helping develop a framework that can be replicated in other remote communities.

Developer: Northwest Arctic Borough with funding from United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) | EPC: Alaska Native Renewable Industries and Daylight Energy Services | Installer: Alaska Native Renewable Industries | Modules: LG | Inverters: EPC Power | Storage: Blue Planet Energy | Racking: AP Alternatives


Walnut Grove Demonstration Facility

Walnut Grove, Miss. | 2.57 MWdc + 5.14 MWh

Walnut Grove

This is the first microgrid project of its kind in Mississippi and the first Mississippi Power Company owned solar + storage project. Designed as a demonstration to test several variables, it incorporated a 5.14 MWh battery storage system coupled with the 2.57 MWdc PV array on a dc bus through a bi-directional inverter, which in turn is cabled directly to the MPC transformer. The project consisted of a primary PV array and six test block arrays each with a dc-dc converter. Test block configurations varied in kW output and were designed/constructed to test efficiencies between various bifacial and monofacial modules configurations with dc optimizers. In addition, the various configurations of the test blocks will explore efficiency and resiliency of different technologies over the life of the project that may benefit the industry long term.

Developer: Southern Company | EPC: Asset Engineering & Axis Energy, Inc. | Installers: Axis Energy, Jones Power | Modules: Qcells | Inverters: Dynapower and Alencon | Storage: LG Energy Solutions | Mounting: OMCO Solar


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