North Carolina Electric Membership Corporation (NCEMC) has deployed microgrids at two locations in eastern North Carolina, including Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks. Crammed with tourists in the summer, the island struggles with high demand charges and outages during severe weather. The project team overcame construction challenges and detailed the technical, operational, and communication requirements that microgrids must achieve.

Six use cases were developed and implemented for the microgrid including: demand response and energy arbitrage, ancillary services, renewable smoothing, islanding and resiliency, asset deferment, and power factor/quality improvement. These use cases have improved NCEMC’s understanding of microgrid capabilities and imparted valuable operational experience for future projects.