By Rod Walton, EnergyTech Senior Editor
Houston-based energy firm Enchanted Rock will install microgrids at three retirement living facilities within the company’s home city.
Retirement Center Management (RCM) selected Enchanted Rock to deliver dual-purpose backup microgrids to the Village of Southhamption, the Village of River Oaks and Village of Tanglewood, three RCM sites in Houston. The gas-fired systems will provide protection from grid outages and disruptions.
Winter Storm Uri brought a historically long stretch of below-freezing temperatures to Texas last year. Power generation resources tripped offline and millions of customers lost power for periods of time. Nearly 250 people died.
“We are excited to partner with Enchanted Rock to provide our residents and their families peace of mind that our communities can maintain power under the most difficult of conditions,” said James Gray, Founder and CEO of RCM. “It is mission critical that we keep all of our residents and their families comfortable, and we know Enchanted Rock will allow us to keep our residents protected to live life well.”
Enchanted Rock noted that its microgrids kept power continuous for 140 customer sites during the Uri outages. Those included grocery stores, distribution centers, water districts, health care, manufacturing and senior citizen living facilities.
“It’s an honor to be trusted by the team at RCM to protect their community that impacts so many lives,” said Allan Schurr, chief commercial officer of Enchanted Rock. “We are confident we can keep RCM’s residents safe and communities operational by providing electrical resiliency when utility companies cannot do so during power outages.”
Enchanted Rock fuels all of its microgrids with natural gas supplied from the underground gas infrastructure. Those systems can complement or back up renewable resources.
Commercial, Industrial, and Institutional (CI&I) customers across North America, as EnergyTech contributor John Egan noted in a recent piece, are accelerating their investigation and deployment of battery energy storage systems (BESS) and microgrids, as severe weather like wildfires in the West, hurricanes, flooding, and the Texas deep freeze of February 2021 have dramatized the costs and problems of power outages.
One of the larger microgrid projects recently is the Bronzeville Community Microgrid project in Chicago led by utility ComEd. Enchanted Rock was contracted to provide 5.5 MW in dispatchable natural gas-fired generation as needed for the combined solar, battery storage and gen-set microgrid.
