2020 September Member Webinar | Matt Haakenstad

Sustainably Lowering your Cost While Improving Reliability: Could You Benefit from a Microgrid?

   

by Matt Haakenstad, PE, CEM, VP, Electric Services at Kinect Energy, Inc.

Tuesday, September 15, 2020 | 2:00-3:00pm (EDT) 

Case Study:  An evaluation of electric supply options for your organization can uncover ways to reduce cost, improve reliability and meet sustainability goals. This approach compares your current situation to alternative DER (Distributed Energy Resource, like Solar, CHP, battery storage, etc.) solutions that provide long-term electric supply that is cost effective, clean, reliable and resilient.   

1) Establish Priorities:  Assign a relative ranking to cost reduction, reliability/resilience, and carbon intensity.  This priority helps determine optimal DERs for your specific situation. 

2) Acquire Data and Conduct Modeling:  Financial and economic requirements, electric and gas consumption and cost, sustainability goals and initiatives, and reliability, resilience and outage history is gathered.  Use a credible modeling tool (such as HOMER GRID, developed by NREL) to optimize microgrid designs from a technical and economic perspective.  

3) Identify Potential Solutions:  Perform DER optimization and sensitivity analysis, factoring in available incentives if appropriate.   The optimization should include a wide range of potential DER technology and size combinations.  Rank the best combinations of DER solutions based on economics, reliability and resilience impacts, and carbon mitigation potential.

BIOGRAPHY

Kinect Energy’s Advisory Services team assists customers in analyzing self-generation, combined heat and power (CHP), and grid interconnection of renewable energy projects such as wind or biomass resources.  Matt’s team also optimizes DER (Distributed Energy Resource) projects for clients, including assessing the economics of a microgrid at their facility.  Finally, Matt’s team analyzes natural gas pipeline bypass and direct connect projects, plant site selection analysis, competitive electric power market dynamics, CNG opportunities, and opportunities for sustainability and energy efficiency projects at client facilities.     

Prior to re-joining Kinect Energy (formerly U.S. Energy), Matt was an Associate Director in Navigant Consulting’s Energy Practice managing energy efficiency evaluations, M&V analyses, benchmarking studies, and related projects.  Prior to joining Navigant, he was a Director of Account management at US Energy Services, Inc., where he managed a team of account executives that assisted clients with plant site development, energy procurement, price risk management and energy efficiency and sustainability services for natural gas, electricity and other fuel sources.  He also has extensive experience in industrial energy studies and re-commissioning analyses, and power industry forecasting software management and development. 

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