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Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the awards earlier this month.
Sustainable Westchester, the nonprofit consortium of Westchester County local governments that facilitates sustainability initiatives, assisted 10 of its member municipalities in applying, and all ten were successful in winning awards of about $100,000 each.
A community microgrid is a local energy network that is able to separate from the larger electrical grid during extreme weather events or emergencies, providing power to individual customers and crucial public services such as hospitals, first responders and water treatment facilities.
Westchester municipalities that won the grants are:
- Town of Cortlandt. The proposed microgrid would include biomass, natural gas, and diesel, and would provide power to the town hall, hospital, fire department, water filtration plant, waste-to-energy plant, gas stations, grocery stores, assisted living centers, and a school.
- Village of Croton-on-Hudson. Croton will follow the model of a “nested microgrid” in which there will be two main geographical areas in the system, each fed by their own portfolio of distributed generation (combined heat and power, solar, and energy storage) and each capable of staying powered in island mode during a grid outage. The proposed microgrid would provide power to a municipal building, library, three fire stations, three schools and district office, medical clinic, grocery/pharmacy, and gas station.
- Village of Irvington. The proposed microgrid would include up to 850 kilowatts of combined heat and power, at least 500 kW of multiple solar arrays, and 200 kW of multiple energy storage systems.
- Town of Mamaroneck. The town plans to utilize natural gas as their main source of generation. The proposed microgrid would provide power to the town center and police station complex, nursing facility, evacuation center, school, gas station, two shopping centers and urgent care center.
- Village of Mount Kisco. The proposed microgrid would use a mix of power generation sources including solar, natural gas, and diesel, and would provide power to the village office, library, police station, fire departments, volunteer ambulance corps, medical facilities, pumping stations, service stations, schools, local industries and businesses, and shelters.
- City of New Rochelle. The proposed microgrid would provide power to fire stations, colleges, government offices, assisted living centers, grocery stores, schools, a senior center and a commercial building.
- Village of Ossining. The proposed microgrid would draw power from combined heat and power, solar and energy storage, and would provide electricity to such critical facilities as a police station and city court, the fire department, several water facilities, the high school, the middle school, a communications company’s operations center and a state prison.
- Town of Somers. The proposed microgrid would include solar and diesel. Power would be provided to a sewage plant, activity center (designated town emergency shelter), town office, gas stations, nursing home, library, schools, fire station, state trooper station and commercial complexes.
- City of White Plains. The proposed microgrid would make use of renewable energy and energy storage technology. The microgrid would serve such sites as the police and city court complex; the Westchester County Court; U.S. District Court and other federal offices; a group of healthcare facilities including the White Plains Hospital, Cancer Care Center, and Kensington Assisted Living Residence; and the White Plains Library, which can serve as an emergency shelter or response center.
- City of Yonkers. The proposed microgrid would make use of a combined heat and power system at the medical center, battery or thermal storage and solar, along with various load-management technology.
Sustainable Westchester will also be offering assistance to the other Westchester communities that also were awarded NY Prize Feasibility Study grants: villages of Mamaroneck, Sleepy Hollow, Tarrytown, Westchester County and Yonkers.
To learn about programs of Sustainable Westchester, go to www.sustainablewestchester.org.
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