How Microgrid Labs is Electrifying Fleets

May 5, 2020

Narayanan Sankar, co-founder and chief operating officer of Microgrid Labs, was one of the panelists at the Clean Tech Summit in February. He spoke about electric vehicles and what Microgrid Labs is doing regarding fleet electrification.

Microgrid Labs is a company that focuses on software and consulting and specializes in fleet electrification and microgrids.  Microgrid Labs has worked on a number of projects with clients, including GoRaleigh, NASA, Via Mobility, and Chapel Hill Transit.

Mr. Sankar explained that Microgrid Labs helped GoRaleigh reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their bus fleet; Microgrid analyzed the routes and what size battery would be needed to operate an electric bus on that route. NASA uses more than 50 buses to transport visitors to different points on the campus, and the goal is to electrify all the buses over the next few years.

In all the projects, Microgrid Labs “recommend[s] the bus battery size, type of chargers, number of chargers, capabilities of chargers, location of chargers, [and] charging schedule”. To help with this process, Microgrid uses “EVOPT”, a modeling and optimization software.

Mr. Sankar stressed the importance of fleet electrification, highlighting that if many companies moved towards having a completely electric fleet, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions would will decrease drastically.

About the Author

Marisa Bishop

Clean Tech Summit Intern, Spring 2020