Southwire Company, one of North America’s largest cable manufacturers, announced an investment in BoxPower, a turnkey microgrid platform provider.
BoxPower, based in Grass Valley, California, designs, installs and manages microgrids for utilities, EV charging and commercial and industrial applications. The company touts its modular hardware, software services, and a team of subject matter experts.
As a part of this investment, Southwire will be a preferred partner to BoxPower for future utility projects. The partnership is intended to strengthen Southwire’s presence in the microgrid market and provide insights into emerging opportunities.
Southwire and its subsidiaries provide solutions including building wire and cable, metal-clad cable, utility products, portable and electronic cord products and OEM wire products. In addition, Southwire offers electrical products, engineered solutions and a variety of field support services.
Under contract to Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), BoxPower designed, built, and will maintain the utility’s first fully remote grid. The system includes a BoxPower SolarContainer featuring a battery energy storage system that was prefabricated at the BoxPower facility in Grass Valley before being transported to the site. The generation source is a canopy solar array.
Remote grids were just one of several countermeasures that PG&E announced it would deploy earlier this year to mitigate the risk of similar wildfires occurring in the future. Other solutions include Ground-level distribution systems, automated and beyond-visual line-of-sight drone operations, backup power, and cutting-off power after detecting faults.
