THE ROLE OF MICRO ENERGY GRIDS AND CONSUMER PREFERENCES ON POWER RELIABILITY, QUALITY, AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS 1

If the United States (U.S.) were attacked from either a sophisticated enemy or even a disgruntled employee, the energy grid would be an easy target with catastrophic results. Lack of regulation, strategic investments in the grid, localized nature of power production and distribution, and old technology have all contributed to a fragile grid that is neither resilient nor reliable. Power outages or an attack from a sophisticated adversary could interrupt power to our military bases and would greatly degrade the force projection capability of our military infrastructure along with crippling the U.S. economy. Creative economic and engineering solutions are needed to finance the upgrades needed not only to ensure the security of our installations, but to also comply with the myriad of regulations, orders, and laws. Driven by the need to have uninterrupted power for our military, this research focuses on linking consumer preferences to selection of energy sources in order to meet the stakeholder priorities. These priorities include carbon footprint, renewable, quality, local production, and resiliency. Applying these preferences into an event simulation for a military installation results in data that illustrates how increased revenues that are driven by consumer demand can result in better designed power grids.