Wednesday, the county released a “request for information” that seeks “technical, commercial, and legal frameworks that would support the development of a municipal electric utility and multiple microgrids throughout Cuyahoga County,” according to the request.
The move follows Cuyahoga County’s creation of a publicly owned utility department in September 2021. A “microgrid” is a local energy grid that can disconnect from the rest of the electric grid and operate independently, according to energy.gov.
The request would be the first round of ideas and proposals from the public on how the microgrids should best be designed, according to county documents.
Microgrids have been a personal favorite of County Executive Armond Budish. Budish has envisioned a hyper-reliable power grid that “won’t lose power for more than five minutes in a year,” cleveland.com reported previously. County documents say that level of reliability – with power on 99.999% of the time – is the industry standard for advanced manufacturing.
Budish has already proposed spending $600,000 in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars to prepare the microgrid project, cleveland.com reported previously.
While the county’s request for information focuses on industrial and commercial entities, the project would “eventually” serve residential areas with the same reliability standards, documents say.
Those who respond to the county’s request are asked to estimate the cost of the project, how they would secure it from cyber attacks, when it would be completed, the types of energy generation and storage technology needed, how they would market the technology to users and more.
Proposals are due by 5 p.m. on June 30.
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