Microgrid Integration

A MetroVolt campus is effectively a microgrid — coordinated generation, storage, and load with its own controller — that can stand alone or lean on the utility.

The campus as a microgrid

A microgrid is a bounded electrical system with its own generation, storage, load, and control that can operate connected to or independent of the wider grid. A co-located burner campus fits that definition precisely: the burner and battery are the generation and storage, the compute is the load, and a microgrid controller coordinates them.

The controller is what turns three imperfect layers into one firm campus. It dispatches the battery for fast transients, holds the burner at steady base output, imports from the grid during burner outages, and executes islanding when the grid fails. It is the software realization of the hybrid that answers the availability gate.

Microgrid control also enforces the honest operating rules the physics demands: keep the plasma at a steady setpoint, absorb load-following in the flexible layers, and schedule burner maintenance into grid-backed windows. The controller is where firmness is actually produced, from a base source that on its own is only 0.86-0.995 available.

Treating the campus as a microgrid — rather than as a reactor with some batteries attached — Treated as software, the reliability logic can also be tested, logged, and audited, so the combined availability the campus claims can be demonstrated in operation rather than only asserted on paper.

• Campus = generation + storage + load + controller
• Controller coordinates all layers and mode changes
• Realizes the hybrid that answers the availability gate
• Enforces steady-base operation the plasma prefers