The economy and security of modern society are highly dependent on the 24/7 availability of power. Directly or indirectly, this impacts the average person as well as businesses and government agencies at virtually every level. Therefore, in today’s security- and energy reliability-aware world, ensuring stable power availability is a critical mandate.

Nonetheless, renewable distributed energy sources are becoming more commonly considered by businesses and some local community applications to improve power autonomy; however, unlike conventional utility power sources, renewables, such as solar and wind, are intermittent and variable by their very nature.

Traditional power management systems are primarily designed to switch from utility power to another continuous power source, such as a backup generator. 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 variable and intermittent distributed energy sources. As a result, microgrid-based power systems can incorporate various energy storage technologies to increase and optimize the use of renewable energy sources effectively and seamlessly to meet long-term sustainability goals in an environmentally conscious world.

As a result, utilities, as well as businesses and local communities, are utilizing or considering microgrids, which can incorporate various energy storage technologies to increase the overall availability and autonomy of their power systems.

Julius Neudorfer is the CTO and founder of North American Access Technologies, Inc. (NAAT). Based in Westchester, New York, 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 for 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.