Analyst Insight: Megatrends Impacting Microgrids

The Microgrid Deployment Tracker 1Q23 is the 23^rd edition of the report from Guidehouse Insights and covers seven microgrid market segments and six principal geographies. The Tracker does not list unit sales of devices; instead, it lists proposed, planned, in-development, and operating microgrids and selected portfolios of microgrids by country, program, and vendor. The Tracker represents the largest and most thorough overview of the microgrid market published by any research service or government organization. Its purpose is to provide the best, up-to-date summary of microgrid projects globally, highlighting key trends across regional markets, customer segments, and generation technologies. For this update, Guidehouse Insights has estimated capacity of microgrid projects where component-level data was not reported or could not be verified. This new, more accurate process revealed approximately 2.5 GW of capacity that was previously omitted. Guidehouse Insights will adopt this process for estimating component-level capacity for all future Microgrid Tracker updates. The Tracker is updated continuously and published every other quarter. The next update is scheduled to be published in 3Q 2023.

This accompanying Analyst Insight maps emerging macroeconomic and industry trends affecting dynamic microgrid markets in leading regions around the world. The number of microgrid projects deployed globally continues to expand, particularly as microgrids are configured to solve utility-scale problems. The US Inflation Reduction Act has spurred domestic manufacturing of clean energy microgrid components but has also created trade tensions between the US and the European Union. As of May 2023, the EU has proposed but not yet approved an incentive scheme to support European cleantech manufacturing, including many components common to microgrids. Additional topics covered in this report include microgrid trends, drivers, and barriers; community flexibility use cases; case studies illustrating global minigrid deployments; a regional market overview by segment; and analyst conclusions.