- Black Start
- The ability to bring a power system up from complete de-energization without any external source. It is inherently sequential: a self-starting grid-forming source establishes a reference, additional generation is paralleled on, and load is added in blocks sized so inrush never outruns online supply. For microgrids it is a routine resilience requirement.
- Demand Response
- Programs that reward electricity consumers for reducing or shifting consumption on request. Types range from emergency response (curtailing during reliability events) to economic response (curtailing to capture high wholesale prices), and from fast frequency regulation responding in seconds to slower peak-shaving with day-ahead notice.
- Flexible (Non-Firm) Interconnection
- An interconnection agreement in which a load accepts that the utility can require it to reduce consumption under defined conditions, in exchange for faster connection and often lower charges. It converts a capacity request into an energy request, letting the utility serve the load against existing headroom rather than building new infrastructure.
- Interconnection Queue
- The backlog of generation, storage, and large load projects awaiting studies and approval to connect to the grid. Across major U.S. operators it holds over two terawatts of capacity, with waits often stretching four to seven years, making it the single largest bottleneck on new power supply and, by extension, on AI infrastructure buildout.
- Islanding
- The act of a microgrid disconnecting from the utility grid and running as a self-contained power system, supplying its own load from local generation and storage. It requires local sources to take over regulating voltage and frequency that the grid previously held stable, making the transition one of the more demanding problems in power engineering.
- Paralleling
- Connecting two or more power sources onto a common bus so they share load. It requires matching voltage magnitude, frequency, and phase angle before closing the breaker; a mismatch produces a destructive transient. Paralleling switchgear orchestrates generators and the grid to share load proportionally and add or remove sources safely.
- Point of Common Coupling
- The electrical boundary between a microgrid and the utility grid, where the switchgear that executes islanding, protection, and reconnection is located. It is the single node through which the microgrid separates from and rejoins the grid, and the place where a facility's resilience strategy is made real or remains theoretical.
- Solid-State Transformer
- A power-electronic device that replaces the low-frequency iron-and-copper conversion of a conventional transformer with rectifier, high-frequency inverter, compact high-frequency transformer, and output stages. Enabled by silicon carbide semiconductors, it actively controls voltage, power factor, and flow, and offers a native DC port, though it remains costlier and less proven than iron for bulk conversion.