Montezuma to build first microgrid in rural Iowa

MONTEZUMA -- U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm announced last week that Montezuma has been awarded nearly $10 million for a microgrid project -- the first in a rural Iowa community.

The project is led by Iowa State University researchers in connection with the City of Montezuma Municipal Light & Power.

The proposal submitted by Iowa State researchers and Light & Power called for a federal investment of roughly $9.5 million and a local cost-share of $2.4 million from university and Montezuma sources.

That $11.9 million investment would provide Montezuma with a microgrid, a small-scale electricity network that can operate as an independent system or can be connected to the larger grid.

Secretary of Energy Granholm also announced other regional projects in the East, Midwest, West and Alaska. All 17 projects are part of the Energy Improvements in Rural or Remote Areas program managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations.

The proposal would transform the generation and distribution of electricity in Montezuma, a town of about 1,400 residents, 70 miles east of Des Moines.

The project will create a utility-scale microgrid to provide reliable, resilient and affordable electricity. The new system would feature power generation from solar panels and a battery storage system.

The project would also replace aging substations, load monitoring and control systems and provide the town with its first two electric vehicle chargers.

It is expected to drop energy costs in Montezuma by an estimated 18% and would reduce costs for Montezuma Municipal Light & Power by an estimated hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

Project leaders say the new microgrid would provide electricity to local communities, Poweshiek County offices, small businesses and manufacturers. The system would produce 3 megawatts of renewable energy, reduce energy purchases by 3.5 gigawatt-hours and reduce transmission costs by 34%.

According Kevin Kudart, the superintendent of Light & Power the solar field will be installed on 10-acres of the company’s land east of Montezuma.

The company plants to install two electric vehicle chargers at the Montezuma Public Library, Kudart said.

About $2.4 million in funds will come from Light & Power reserves, said Kudart. Construction won’t begin for at least another year.

“Even though the project is underway and that work is ongoing, the earliest construction will begin is mid-2025,” said Kudart.

The project will include the installation of a new substation behind city hall but will not change the city’s diesel-powered generation station.

Zhaoyu Wang, a Northrop Grumman associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Iowa State who’s affiliated with the university’s Electric Power Research Center and leader of the project, said the project will make the entire town of Montezuma the very first utility-scale microgrid in Iowa with the best reliability and resilience.

“The Montezuma microgrid will revolutionize and modernize the Montezuma Municipal Light and Power system by integrating smart grid technologies,” said Wang. “It will be a model for other rural utilities.

“The microgrid will improve Montezuma by ensuring energy supplies for critical loads, controlling power quality and reliability at the local level, and promoting customer participation through demand-side management and involvement in electricity supply,” Wang said.

“This is so much more than an R & (research and development) project because it will directly benefit more than 1,400 Montezuma residents and generate significant impacts on surrounding counties. It shows Iowa State University is working to bring real benefits to Iowans and boost local economies,” said Wang.

Anne Kimber, the director of the Electric Power Research Center and a co-leader of the project, said Montezuma residents depend on electricity for city and county services, schools, health care, shopping and employment and that this project will benefit the rural farming and manufacturing community.

“During the August 2020 derecho, Montezuma was able to keep the lights on by running its existing diesel generation fleet, which kept essential services available to the surrounding area,” said Kimber.

“This new microgrid will have immediate benefits for the community because it will provide a resilient power system with new technology that integrates renewable generation, and the project design can be replicated in other rural communities,” said Kimber.

“The digital twin of the Montezuma microgrid and the training curricula that we’ll develop and test with various partners – ranging from K-12 schools, the Meskwaki Nation, unions and community colleges – will build an energy workforce.”

“This is a huge benefit for our customers and for local economic development because it provides long-term rate stability from the solar and the battery energy storage systems,” said Kudart.

“Our reliability will increase with the new, more modern switchgear, and our outage time will be reduced by having new controls. And we’ll promote good customer relations by providing vehicle charging stations,” said Kudart.

Project partners also include Dennis Haselhoff from DGR Engineering based in Rock Rapids, and Warren McKenna, an independent consultant based in Kalona.