The global movement to decarbonize the grid to combat climate change is upending long-held views of the electricity system. As more solar and wind are added, the grid requires more flexibility and grid-stability services to maintain reliable operation. The “electrification of everything” puts additional strain on an already aging grid. When increasing severe weather is considered, critical facility customers are increasingly looking for proven backup power solutions. They may turn to their utility for a solution, but in most cases the inquiry typically results in the purchase of a backup diesel generator where the utility had little or no involvement in the purchase decision. Enchanted Rock now offers a better solution that is cleaner, more reliable, and cost-competitive when integrated with the utility’s operations. Our solution now allows utilities to be active participants in their customer’s resiliency decisions.

Enchanted rock’s microgrid solution is clean and cost effective

Enchanted Rock’s dual purpose microgrid (DPM) provides the utility with quick start, fast ramp, flexible, local capacity from an ultra-clean dispatchable gas genset fueled by natural gas or Renewable Natural Gas (RNG). The managed microgrid helps integrate increasing amounts of renewable energy while also providing critical facility Commercial & Industrial (C&I) customers an affordable, highly reliable on-site resiliency power solution. We are helping solve the grid challenges of today and enabling the utility of tomorrow.

All microgrids are not created equal. Our DPM solution provides several benefits such as improved energy reliability and resiliency, energy accessibility and independence, energy flexibility and cost optimization.

Energy Reliability & Resiliency

When grid disruptions occur or are expected, the host customer can operate in islandmode and receive energy locally for outages of any duration. Our cloud-based monitoring and control systems remotely and dynamically manage load priorities and control strategies to ensure local resiliency.

Energy Accessibility & Independence

Access to emergency onsite energy at a competitive price compared to backup diesel alternatives enabling reliable energy for more customers.

Energy Flexibility & Cost Optimization

Ability to integrate other local distributed resources such as solar and batteries to prioritize consumption of renewable sources helping to reduce energy-related greenhouse gas emissions as well as provide grid balancing services.

Enchanted rock – who we are, what we do, and how we do it!

Enchanted Rock is a distributed power producer(DPP), headquartered in Houston, Texas. Our business is providing utility grade backup power resiliency microgrids to large critical infrastructure customers. Our legacy comes from our founders’ navy nuclear and NASA background. We have taken the design and operating principles of that experience and built our business around them. We have a highly standardized technology and processes for design, construction, commissioning, and operations and maintenance. We monitor everything 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to ensure our assets are available when needed.

Since 2009, we have been providing end-to-end backup power resiliency solutions. We now have approximately 550 megawatts (MW) commissioned with some notable name-brand companies across a variety of industries. When combined with utility service, we are at 99.996% reliability. When there are outages, we perform exceptionally well within 10 seconds to be able to back up critical facility customer sites and can operate for as long as that outage lasts. We have over 250 sites, a half-million run hours on our generator, and a modular design that allows us to scale from below 1 MW to 10s of MW with the same generator design and technology.

Our microgrids utilize our patented generator module as the core building block. Working with utilities we can locate in front of the meter (FOM) to achieve economies of scale for a community microgrid or for deferral of substation upgrades, or behind the meter (BTM) on the customer’s site to provide local resiliency. We connect to the utility service with a grid synchronous automatic transfer switch (ATS). The ATS allows a seamless transition between grid and microgrid, so that the grid services that help offset the cost of resiliency can be performed without any impact on the utility service to the host customer. We can integrate other technologies that are onsite as well as other distributed energy resources like solar and storage, or demand response, or building load controls. Our technology platform integrates these resources together, monitors onsite conditions, and can dispatch based on economic opportunities.

Our Network Operations Center (NOC) monitors the operations of these systems for grid outages or any other operations on a 24 hour, 7 days per week basis to ensure our assets are available when needed. Maintenance is done on schedule, fuel management is taken care of, and all the construction and operation are part of the entire package. The customer gets worry-free resiliency at the lowest cost with the lowest carbon emissions. In fact, we are partnering with some customers and utilities to provide Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) as a fuel source option, so customers can meet their clean energy goals.

Enchanted rock utility partner program resiliency as a service solution

We understand that large C&I customers are increasingly seeking resiliency solutions, and we believe utilities are in a unique position to provide them. Power resiliency is top of mind for all, especially with the challenges facing the transformation of today’s grid into the grid of the future. For critical infrastructure, which has expanded beyond hospitals and emergency services to include food, water, supply chain, communications, and cloud services, it is about keeping communities safe and society up and running. Enchanted Rock has created the Utility Partner Program to help utilities accelerate the delivery of high value resiliency services to their largest customers. Support services include planning, program design and development, marketing resources toolkit, program management, regulatory support services, as well as traditional EPC and O&M services. We also provide flexible commercial arrangements depending on how the utility prefers to deploy capital.

The result is piece of mind for your critical load customer that ensures continuous service, improves customer satisfaction and competitive advantage, and improves local emissions while helping meet carbon reduction goals. Our solution is not just backup power, as our microgrids can be integrated into the overall power stack to be dispatched during peak load periods to reduce supply costs by providing needed generation on demand.

Call to action

How will utilities meet the challenges of today’s grid and prepare for the grid of the future? There is no silver bullet, and a diversity of solutions is needed. Distributed generation microgrids are proven, high-value solutions that are up to the task. With Enchanted Rock’s modern microgrid innovation, our utility partners are in a unique position to provide safe, reliable, and affordable power to their critical load customers all while continuing to integrate renewable energy to the grid through the addition of locally placed, dispatchable fast ramp clean generating assets. It is important to note that DPMs do not compete with gridsupplied power. Instead, they displace the historical reliance on backup diesel generators, which represent one of the most polluting of all power generation options. They also generate an offsetting revenue stream by supporting the broader grid during times of crisis. For a solution such as ours, we need to engage company leaders that can ensure the right stakeholders are in the room. Key stakeholders might include such organizations as power supply, customer programs & key accounts, distribution & resource planning.