The Martha’s Vineyard Transit Authority’s (VTA) solar-plus-storage microgrid powers its electric public transportation bus fleet and POWER has recognized it as its Distributed Energy Award winner for 2022. What’s exciting for us is that in case you didn’t already know, PXiSE’s Microgrid Controller is the brains behind this awesome operation, and we’re thrilled it’s being heralded as a clean energy model.
The PXiSE Microgrid Controller coordinates a 0.5-MW/1.5-MWh battery energy storage system (BESS), 466 kWAC of solar PV panels, a backup diesel generator, and the large power load from the bus chargers. Using advanced feedback control and decoupled real and reactive power technology, it constantly fine-tunes the output of the solar PV and battery energy storage unit, self-adjusting in real-time, to maintain power quality and mitigate intermittency.
Using its forecasting capabilities, the controller also optimizes import/export of power at the point of interconnection to reduce electricity bills in concert with the demand response program and by avoiding peak demand charges.
Congratulations VTA on your award-winning project!
- Read more about the project in our case study: Electrifying Transit in Martha’s Vineyard
- View the Power Magazine article
