Are Microgrids the Answer to City-Disrupting Disasters?

Backup generators and islanded mini-grids helped some parts of New York City keep the lights on after Hurricane Sandy

In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, when most of lower Manhattan was a sea of darkness, New York University’s Washington Square campus shone like a beacon in the night.

“The entire neighborhood was dark — everything. And then there was us,” said John Bradley, NYU’s assistant vice president of sustainability, energy and technical services. “It really was a little surreal.”

Swaths of Manhattan below 36th Street were powerless after Sandy hit, due to pre-emptive shutdowns and severe flooding that knocked out a power station in the East Village. But key buildings on NYU’s campus stayed alight thanks to a self-sufficient microgrid system, designed to distribute electricity independently of Consolidated Edison Inc.’s main grid network.

A 13.4-megawatt combined heat and power (CHP) plant — made up of two giant natural gas-fired turbines housed below Mercer Street — powers the university’s 26 electrically connected buildings. It also provides hot and cold water for up to 40 buildings by harnessing waste heat that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere. The efficient CHP facility produces 30 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than the oil-fired power plant it replaced.

In response to Superstorm Sandy, which made landfall last Oct. 30, leaders at all levels of the U.S. government have identified microgrids like the one at NYU as key components to improving energy resiliency on the East Coast. A recent federal report by the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force cites microgrid systems as a means of mitigating the sprawling impacts of disasters fueled by climate change.

There’s no official definition of a microgrid, but they’re generally considered to be self-contained grid systems equipped with on-site power generation, like a CHP plant or a renewable resource like wind or solar. As isolated entities, microgrids can keep operating — and, in NYU’s case, keep students safe and power flowing to research projects — even in the event of a large-scale power outage.

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