Microgrid Knowledge covered AEE’s 2021 National Jobs Fact Sheet and the Advanced Energy Now 2021 Market Report, highlighting employment and microgrid market prospects. Read excerpts below and the full story here.
After getting slammed by COVID-19 last spring, jobs at advanced energy companies are rebounding but remain below prepandemic levels, according to Advanced Energy Economy (AEE), a trade group. The report found that the segment that includes microgrids also experienced a downturn.
There were 3.5 million advanced energy jobs at the end of 2019, up 2.1% from the year before, AEE said in a report April 19…
[W]ind energy employment grew 2% to 117,000 jobs, and electric vehicle-related jobs grew 2%.
Surveyed late last year, advanced energy employers predicted job growth of 8% for this year, AEE said.
C&I hottest microgrid market
Looking ahead, the commercial and industrial (C&I) sector will be the fastest growing market in North America over the next decade, according to a separate AEE report written by Guidehouse Insights, formerly Navigant Research…
Guidehouse said there are four key factors driving the outlook for the C&I microgrid market
- Sharply falling costs for distributed solar photovoltaics (PV) and energy storage…
- Major advances in software controls...
- Business innovation…
- The emergence of modular microgrid solutions…
Last year, those trends prompted Schneider Electric and Huck Capital to create GreenStruxure, a company that focuses on microgrids for medium-size buildings, with an emphasis on the California market, according to Guidehouse…
Microgrids were a $9.5 billion market in 2020
Microgrids were a $9.5 billion market last year, with remote microgrids accounting for $4.1 billion and the C&I segment making up $3.6 billion of the overall market. Spending on US microgrids hit $3.1 billion after climbing 13% a year over the last decade.
Microgrids stand to gain from a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) decision requiring grid operators, such as PJM Interconnection, to give aggregated distributed resources access to wholesale power markets, according to Guidehouse…
Read the full story here.