Smart Microgrids Make it Easier to Efficiently Meet Growing Consumer Demand

As Americans’ dependence on electricity for everything from entertainment to automobile travel increases, there are no signs that the rising demand for power will level off. Microgrids allow local communities, neighborhoods and even individual buildings to increase electricity supply quickly through relatively local small generators, rather than having to wait for power companies to build costly centralized power plants that take much longer to come online. They also can provide realtime price signals and automatically adjust electricity usage to most efficiently meet the power needs of each individual consumer.