DEEM Enterprises is in the process of redeveloping Bader Field, Atlantic City’s former municipal airport, into a 142-acre mixed-use real estate development. The “Renaissance at Bader Field” vision is a progressive, healthy, and resilient community that shines as a paradigm of environmental stewardship and adds value to AC and the broader community through economic activity and resilience. The development group approached ProtoGen to lead development of a carbon-neutral microgrid. Our feasibility study entailed engaging 30+ project stakeholders, conducting extensive techno-economic modeling of potential solution sets, and a final recommendations report.

The microgrid envisioned will serve hundreds of residential, commercial, and hospitality loads behind a point of common coupling with the Atlantic City Electric (ACE) distribution grid. Our initial modeling provides annual site loads of 60,000 MWh peaking at 14 MW. The microgrid will comprise 10.6 MW of rooftop PV (the site maximum), 13 MWh of energy storage, and 7 MW of distributed gas-fired microturbines. Microturbine technology was selected because it can be seamlessly and incrementally transitioned from natural gas to renewable (“green”) hydrogen as that market develops. Waste heat from the microturbines will be captured and used to supplement the site thermal system. 

These components and other flexible site loads will be coordinated via a microgrid controller installed at the site network operations center (NOC). The system is projected to meet roughly half of the development’s load on average; this will ultimately be balance in real time against a range of economic, operational, and resilience inputs. The microgrid is capable of riding through extended outages due to hurricane or other adverse events indefinitely, thereby providing a robust resilience hub for Atlantic City and state/federal partners to organize, stage, and execute recovery efforts.