Schneider Electric is at the helm of a new initiative aimed at speeding up the deployment of resilient, community-based energy systems across the country, the company announced today.
The Accelerating Resilient Infrastructure Initiative brings together over 20 developers, infrastructure providers, electrical distributors, and insurers, with the intention of connecting them with public and private projects in need of guidance, developers, and financing. Partners include energy-as-a-service provider AlphaStruxure, solar energy company Sunrock Distributed, global insurer Zurich, and Microsoft, among others.
Jana Gerber, North American president of microgrids at Schneider Electric, told Latitude Media that Schneider will act as a coordinator, and will also make its technologies, such as microgrids and electric vehicle charging solutions, available for deployment. Ideal customers for the initiative are communities that have “the desire to take control of their energy and have more resilience,” she said. “We help them pull together the team to rally around them to deliver that project.”
The announcement comes as communities and developers scramble to start construction on clean energy projects before key tax credits sunset. Under the GOP’s “One Big Beautiful Bill, passed in July, qualifying solar and wind projects need to start construction before the beginning of July 2026 to take advantage of clean electricity production and investment credits.
This urgency is key to the initiative’s framing: “Acting now allows organizations to take advantage of existing funding mechanisms before key deadlines shift — making timely planning essential,” Schneider notes in its announcement.
“The initiative is…to help create a sense of urgency for the customers to have this opportunity to have resilient infrastructure,” Gerber said. “That’s because of the tax credits, [but also] in general, for the conditions in the areas where they live. There’s multiple things that can be done to help them drive up energy efficiency or help them create on-site generation.”
For instance, partners in the initiative would help local communities deploy and finance solutions such as solar panels, battery energy storage, geothermal heat pumps, and electric vehicles charging infrastructure, as well as data innovation solutions, in the case of tech companies like Microsoft.
Partners like Unison Energy, Verdant Microgrid, and Sunrock have a collective $7.5 billion in deployable capital for energy resiliency projects; that sum is not exclusive to projects pursued through the initiative, but illustrates how much capital is available to back new construction.
Public entities pursuing energy resiliency projects can access that capital through performance contracting, which would entail having an energy-as-a-service company install clean energy upgrades, and paying for them over time using the savings those upgrades guarantee. Or, alternatively, they can have the energy companies design, build, own, operate, finance, and maintain the energy system, and pay them a recurring fee, while the energy company makes money on the energy savings it is implementing.
These potential projects are small in scale, and specific to the needs of the impacted community. For instance, Schneider has previously installed microgrids at two bus depots in Montgomery County, Maryland, and a 2.9-megawatt solar and microgrid system across eight municipal buildings in Piscataway, New Jersey; the latter is expected to deliver $19 million in savings over 20 years. In Texas, a 4.2 MW solar project across 10 school buildings is projected to save the Longview Independent School District district $450,000 annually in utility costs.
