Siemens and the University of New Mexico (UNM) have agreed to collaborate on integrating renewable energy systems and microgrids.

The agreement begins a collaboration centred around the UNM-owned microgrid, located next to the UNM Interdisciplinary Film & Digital Media building at Mesa Del Sol in Albuquerque. The microgrid assets include facilities such as a cooling tower, thermal storage tank, battery energy storage system, fuel cell, photovoltaic system and a natural gas generator.

The UNM School of Engineering microgrid was built almost a decade ago with Japan’s New Energy & Industrial Technology Development Organisation (Nedo), a consortium working in partnership with UNM, Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM).

The facility was established to research the interface between buildings, distributed power generation and the power grid, as well as to test smart-grid technologies. Nedo created the microgrid, a section of the power grid that can produce and store its own power, through a mix of local renewable and fossil-energy sources. The microgrid can operate independently of the main power grid in an islanded mode.

For more than 100 years, German firm Siemens has developed technologies that support multiple industries, including manufacturing, energy, healthcare and infrastructure.

UNM is part of a statewide consortium that received a five-year, $20m grant in 2018 to modernise the electrical grid. The award from the National Science Foundation Established Programme to Stimulate Competitive Research (Epscor) for the New Mexico Smart Grid Center supports an integrated research and education programme for the development of distribution feeder microgrids.

The Smart Grid Center pursues the next generation of electric power production and delivery through creation of a smart electric grid, one that is sustainable, modular, adaptive, resilient and transactive. The research programme seeks to transform the existing electricity distribution feeders into interconnected microgrids using multiple testbeds across New Mexico, including the UNM microgrid.

The effort includes researchers from UNM, New Mexico State University, New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology, Santa Fe Community College, Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Microgrid Systems Laboratory. Industry partners include Siemens, PNM, Electric Power Research Institute, Oracle and El Paso Electric.

Siemens will replace the existing controllers on the microgrid with Siemens controllers in the first phase of the collaboration. The microgrid will generate data that will be useful to Siemens in analysing its operation in real-world conditions.

The microgrid facilitates UNM’s research activities in the areas of power system modernisation, renewable energy systems, smart grids and smart cities.