Microgrids have grown to over 1.2 gigawatts (GW) in capacity, with future projections reaching 20GW by 2020 and 100GW by 2030, that is according to Andres Carvallo, CEO of CMG, a consultancy that advises on smart grids and other infrastructure. Carvallo told attendees at the Smart Cities Week 2016 conference in Washington, D.C. last week that he believes the ability of microgrids to operate autonomously from larger grids could prove to be a major driver of Internet of Things (IoT) adoption in smart cities of the future. “Highly instrumented microgrids can strengthen grid resilience and help minimize outages in the larger utility grid,” said Carvallo. “Microgrids are designed to enable two-way power flow and two-way dataflow that require pervasive instrumentation and connectivity on just about every device within it.” Microgrids are small, local energy grids that can be disconnected from the larger utility grid and operate independently. They are often powered by multiple technologies that […]