Terence Parker, Solar Mounts LLC’s Technical Marketing and Compliance Officer, attended the “Overcoming Grid Edge Capacity Challenges and the Role of Microgrids” workshop at RE+ Northeast 2026 in Boston. This lecture was given by Brian Patterson of the EMerge Alliance. This group works with SEIA to form associations, solutions and opportunities in the RE business. The lecture started with some general numbers around energy use in the United States and how we may need a “complete transformation of the utility grid”. Brian believes we are at an inflection point. Brian is predicting that very soon, the US will require 2-4 times as much electricity as the grid can provide today, and that we are heading for a shortage of power. That’s scary, if for no other reason than the amount of new mining that may be required.
Currently, the US consumes ~4000 terawatts of power per day. It’s interesting to note that Bitcoin miners are currently consuming ~400 terawatts of power per day (10% of all US consumption). In addition to Bitcoin, other new electrical loads are driving huge new demands for power. These new loads are, 1) heat pumps, 2) electric vehicles, 3) AI Hyperscale Data Centers and very soon, 4) millions of new personal robots. Brian thinks personal robots will be at least 1/10th of the population in the near future (Brian and his disabled wife use a $150K personal robot in their home today). So, just as we developed the internet, a system that we can add to, Brian believes we need to create a new “Enternet”, a new “grid of grids” system that efficiently carries power (rather than information like the internet). And like our information superhighway, we need to build a power super highway that can handle 10X the power we use today, and results in a more efficient / better power infrastructure.
Brian believes this “grid of grids” is a hybrid of the traditional grid and microgrids on the “grid edge”. Its interesting to note that 80% of our ac power is converted to DC. It’s the age of transistors and AI data center server racks. These server racks consume 250 kW in a single rack! And they can consume as much as 500 kW each. They are the size of large file cabinets and there can be 200- 500 racks in one AI hyperscale data center. So, it seems logical that the new national utility grid must be both an ac grid and a dc grid. Today, AI hyperscale data centers are BYOP (bring your own power) sites and are using solar (likely State-mandated), and peaker plants (natural gas) to energize the server racks. We are already having a shortage of power in the US. But don’t worry, small modular reactors (SMR) are coming! In the future, we don’t want just Power Resiliency (power could go down but you can turn it back on), we want Power Surety – the power never goes away. And a likely path for power surety is to further develop microgrids in conjunction with a more sophisticated national utility grid that utilizes dc-coupled technologies that are easier to articulate and distribute.
We are seeing the development of a dc grid in South Korea today. KEPCO is moving their entire grid to high voltage dc. They’ve built microgrid substations in nearby communities that accept high voltage dc from the grid for distribution to dc-coupled hubs where the power is converted to 1500Vdc / 700Vdc for distribution within the microgrid and then down to 350Vdc for distribution into homes. The microgrid substations are tied to a local solar array, maybe a small peaker plant and a large set of batteries. In the home, you would have both dc plugs and ac plugs (supplied from the home inverter). This solution provides power support and power surety for the entire
neighborhood (microgrid). In the US, it could be more difficult to get our National Grid operators (East, West and Texas grids) on board with this new “grid of grids” because there are 50 Public Utility Commissions (PUC) and over 3000 utilities operating in the United States! But we certainly need to open up a discussion. The good news is that our own electrical code (the NEC) is adding sections on “Fault-Managed Power” and the focus is on articulation of power.
