Overview
Faith Technologies Incorporated (FTI), the parent brand to EnTech Solutions, set out to create an off-the-grid experience for its customers and partners and to showcase the organization’s energy capabilities. The Lakeside Vision Center is a 19,000-square-foot multi-purpose facility that is powered by EnTech Solutions’ clean energy technologies, enabling FTI to bring its energy independence vision to life.
Challenges
The Vision Center is located on the east shore of Lake Winnebago in central Wisconsin. The picturesque rural location is at the end of the utility grid and as such, the area experiences frequent power interruptions due to weather or other occurrences. EnTech Solutions was challenged to provide clean, uninterruptible power to the site, and to be able to demonstrate the value of energy resilience.
Solution
The Lakeside Vision Center is powered by clean energy Xcape™ and DCentrIQ™ microgrids which consist of ground-mount and roof-top solar, battery storage, a natural gas generator and DCentrIQ power controls. All power is managed by EnTech Energy Center™ proprietary software. It is an educational facility where FTI is able to demonstrate energy resilience, building confidence in its energy products and solutions with quantifiable metrics. Within the facility itself, and remotely via the EnTech Energy Center, customers and visitors are able to view live energy data feeds and analytics of the systems powering the facility and learn how these systems can be applied to their own energy challenges.
Outcome
The Vision Center is the first piece of a comprehensive off-grid development being created by FTI at the Lakeside site. Future development plans include an off-grid residential community, with each site featuring solar PV and battery storage for independence from the utility grid.
Off-grid communities are being successfully built around the country, and Lakeside will be the first development of its kind in the Midwest. The changing seasons in the upper Midwest and sometimes less-than-temperate weather would lead some to believe that stable, off-grid solar energy is not an option for the region. The Lakeside development will prove that EnTech Solutions’ energy technologies can be effectively applied anywhere, making the location a destination and proof point for people to visit and learn.
