The basic purpose of a microgrid is to island the user facility — be it a hospital or fire station — from the utility grid when brown-outs or black-outs are at play (which are becoming more common). While the regulated utilities claim a need for state approval for billions of dollars worth of grid improvements to avoid these outages — both planned and unplanned — such improvements, if approved, are not likely to be evenly distributed.
Utility grid “investments are unlikely to be made in areas with low population density but that are likely high risk for outages. This type of situation could be aptly addressed by DER (distributed energy resources), within microgrids or as standalone resources,” observes a February 2021 report from the California Energy Commission on DER planning.