The economy and security of modern society are highly dependent on the 24x7 availability of power. Directly or indirectly, this impacts the average person as well as businesses and government agencies at virtually every level.

Therefore, ensuring continuous power under normal as well as adverse conditions is a critical mandate. Most recently, microgrid technologies are being considered to help optimize the availability of power systems as well as allowing them to accommodate a variety of distributed energy sources, including some, such as solar and wind, which are variable and intermittent by their very nature.

Intelligent power management systems, which are the nexus of a microgrid, must seamlessly adapt to more dynamic power sources while ensuring uninterrupted power. Moreover, the power infrastructure must be efficient and adept when it comes to accommodating continuously varying load demands.

As a result, utilities, businesses, and local communities are utilizing or considering microgrids, which can incorporate various energy storage technologies to increase the availability of their power systems. This also allows them to cost-effectively and seamlessly meet the long term sustainability goals of an environmentally conscious world.

Julius Neudorfer is the CTO and founder of North American Access Technologies, Inc. (NAAT). Based in Westchester, NY, NAAT’s clients include Fortune 500 firms and government agencies. NAAT has been designing and implementing data center infrastructure and related technology projects for the last 25 years. He is a member of AFCOM, ASHRAE, IEEE, iMasons and The Green Grid. He is also an instructor for the U.S. Department of Energy “Data Center Energy Practitioner” “DCEP” program. He developed and holds a U.S. patent for a high efficiency cooling system for rack mounted computer equipment. Julius writes the “Hot Aisle Insight” column at _Mission Critical_ Magazine, and has also written numerous articles and whitepapers for various IT and data center publications and has presented seminars and webinars on data center power, cooling and energy efficiency.