Severe weather events such as hurricanes, torrential rains, snowstorms and wildfires are becoming the norm around the world. The most significant of those risks for a business that relies on electricity to keep its operations running is one that pertains to the availability and quality of power from the utility electricity grid. At the same time, electricity is a large and growing component of operation costs for many businesses, especially for data centers, hospitals, military establishments, manufacturing plants, office buildings and other facilities. Many of these facilities are choosing to build microgrids incorporating on-site power generation technologies and sophisticated load management to achieve resiliency of their power supply as well as advancing corporate goals around sustainability and operational cost reduction.
Advanced microgrid architectures and trade-offs in design choices using distributed generation will be discussed. Recent examples of microgrid deployments in the data center, healthcare, retail, manufacturing industry will be presented.
Rajesh Gopinath, P.E. is with Bloom Energy, the provider of distributed on-site electric power solutions that is redefining the electric power market and transforming how power is generated and delivered. Bloom Energy Servers, based on its innovative fuel cell technology, provide highly reliable, 24 x 7 constant power for microgrids and mission critical facilities.
Prior to his current role as senior product manager responsible for mission critical products, Rajesh has held positions in R&D and operations at Bloom.
Rajesh has spent the last 15 years working on technical and economic challenges of integrating inverter-based distributed generation sources into utility networks, mission critical systems, and microgrids. Previously at Toshiba Corporation and AETI, Rajesh worked on design and ground-up development of power electronics for industrial motor controls and power converters for marine propulsion, oil & gas drilling and wind and solar photovoltaic projects.
Rajesh received the MSEE degree from Texas A&M University in College Station, TX and MBA from University of Texas at Austin.