An interview with Jana Gerber, North American President, Microgrids, Schneider Electric
Setting the Stage
At Schneider Electric’s Innovation Summit, I sat down with Jana Gerber, North American President of Microgrids, to talk about how distributed energy and “prosumer” models are changing how buildings and campuses think about power. We focused on what’s driving microgrid growth, how Schneider is trying to standardize what has historically been a one-off engineering exercise, and why interoperability will determine how fast this market really scales.
What follows is an edited Q&A for AutomatedBuildings.com, with an emphasis on practical implications for building owners, operators, and solution providers.
Career Path and Role
Tracy: Jana, start with your background. How did you end up leading the microgrid business at Schneider?
Jana: I’m a civil engineer by training, but I became more interested in how buildings operate from the inside out than how they stand up. I’ve been with Schneider Electric for about 25 years in roles across digital buildings, performance contracting, strategic accounts working with large healthcare and commercial real estate customers, and our sustainability business helping enterprises with sustainability and energy cost optimization.
About three years ago, I moved into my current role leading the microgrid business for North America. Schneider has been working on microgrids for roughly 15 to 20 years globally, and the U.S. is now one of our major focus areas.
What Microgrids Look Like in Practice
Tracy: Give us a feel for what your projects look like in the real world.
Jana: It’s a broad range. A few examples:
- Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego – a large, complex microgrid on a critical military base that can island from the grid and support mission-critical operations.
- Domaine Carneros in Napa Valley – a winery that combines retail, agriculture, and food and beverage on one site, using a microgrid to support resilient operations and sustainability goals.
- Montgomery County, Maryland – starting with a public safety building and extending microgrids to support fleet electrification, including charging for electric buses.
We also work with industrial and transportation players like Knight-Swift Transportation as they deploy electric trucks and need scalable charging and resiliency solutions. In many of these projects, customers work with EcoStruxture, our joint venture partner that delivers an energy-as-a-service model, wrapping design, technology, financing, and long-term operations into a single offering.
What Schneider Actually Does
Tracy: On a given project, are you mainly a manufacturer, an integrator, or something else?
Jana: The honest answer is “all of the above,” depending on the project.
Our strengths line up with several layers of the system: electrical distribution, which is foundational to any microgrid; controls and power management, including PLCs and power management systems with intelligent load control; and secure power and battery energy storage, where we’ve leveraged our UPS expertise and brought a dedicated storage solution to market.
We also provide energy and sustainability studies, services, and system integration to make the parts work together. On the generation side, we work with solar, generators, and other resources, sometimes including methane or other alternative fuels. Typically, an engineer or EPC leads permitting and utility interaction, and we bring the technology and integration layer that turns those assets into a functioning microgrid. In that sense it’s very similar to building automation: many subsystems that have to operate in concert.
Guidehouse recently ranked Schneider Electric as the number one microgrid integrator worldwide and put us in the leadership tier for battery energy storage integration, which reflects the breadth and maturity of this work.
Grid-Tied vs. Off-Grid
Tracy: Are most of your systems grid-connected, or are you seeing many fully off-grid projects?
Jana: Most of our projects are grid-tied. There are some off-grid microgrids, but the majority operate with the utility and have the ability to island when needed. That adds complexity—interconnection rules, coordination with the utility—but it also creates opportunities for the site to support the broader grid at critical times.
Standardizing Microgrids: Microgrid Flex
Tracy: There’s a saying that if you’ve seen one microgrid, you’ve seen one microgrid. You’ve said you’re trying to make them more repeatable. How?
Jana: That phrase is still pretty accurate. Many microgrids are highly bespoke. To change that, we created Microgrid Flex to standardize and simplify deployment.
Microgrid Flex targets specific use cases and size ranges, typically built around solar, battery storage, and a generator. The goal is to reduce installation time, increase repeatability, and improve project economics.
We support this with a lab in Andover, Massachusetts, where we bring in different distributed energy resources, inverters, and technologies and work through the integration ahead of time. We test interoperability, validate control code, and pre-engineer configurations that can then be rolled out through partners instead of starting from scratch on every project.
Interoperability and Open Ecosystems
Tracy: You’ve used the word “interoperable” several times. Schneider could be fully vertically integrated if it wanted to be. Are you trying to be the whole stack?
Jana: We see ourselves as part of a larger ecosystem, not the whole thing.
We provide key components—electrical distribution, controls, secure power, and software—but on-site generation and prosumer models will never be built by one company alone. They depend on utilities, developers, customers, and other technology providers.
Our goal is to provide strong technology and open, interoperable architectures, and then work with partners to deliver a comprehensive solution. One example is EcoStruxure Automation Expert, a PLC-based, software-centric platform that we see as a foundation for data sharing and integration across systems, including future microgrid deployments.
The Rise of the Prosumer
Tracy: Zooming out, how do microgrids fit into smart buildings, campuses, and the grid of the future?
Jana: We see more decentralization coming, driven by digitization and decarbonization.
We talk about the “prosumer”—an entity that both produces and consumes energy. That might be a building, a campus, a community, a manufacturing plant, or a data center. A prosumer procures energy intelligently, uses it efficiently through controls and load management, and then produces or stores energy locally. In some cases, they also provide services back to the grid where programs and economics support that.
Historically the grid has been one-directional. It’s becoming bi-directional and more dynamic, and prosumers will play a bigger role. Microgrids are a key enabler of that shift.
A good example is Miramar. During critical summer periods a few years ago, the local utility was stressed and asked the base to keep its energy usage to itself so it could support the surrounding community. Miramar’s microgrid allowed them to island and help stabilize the grid by not drawing power at the worst moments.
Economics and Incentives
Tracy: Can these projects stand on their own economically, or do they rely on incentives?
Jana: Incentives are helpful, especially for new technologies and early adopters. Programs in regions like PJM and California let customers participate in grid programs and improve project economics.
But they’re not the only path. As energy costs rise and resilience becomes more important, we see many projects that make financial sense even without heavy incentives. And there are always cases where resilience is the primary driver—military bases, critical infrastructure, hospitals—where the value of staying online outweighs simple payback calculations.
AI, Analytics, and Optimization
Tracy: Let’s talk about AI. How is it showing up in your microgrid work?
Jana: AI mainly shows up in the services and analytics layer. Our EcoStruxure Microgrid Advisor uses advanced analytics—now increasingly AI-enabled—to look at tariffs, demand charges, and other signals, forecast load and generation, and then optimize how resources are dispatched based on what matters to the customer, whether that’s cost, sustainability, or resilience.
Where Microgrids Matter Most
Tracy: Which sectors are seeing the most traction?
Jana: Transportation and logistics is a big one because of fleet electrification. Large numbers of electric trucks or buses create significant new loads, and microgrids can help manage capacity and resilience.
Critical infrastructure—military bases, airports, public safety facilities, and federal sites—is another. Healthcare has similar needs for resilience and power quality.
Data centers are a major growth area. Even when customers don’t label them as microgrids, they are effectively building “energy parks” around data centers to handle large loads and maintain stability. Digital twins and simulation are becoming important tools there.
We also see opportunity in commercial buildings and campuses, especially freestanding sites with space for on-site generation and storage.
Barriers and the Path Forward
Tracy: What’s holding the market back from moving even faster?
Jana: Policy and political uncertainty—tariffs, clean-energy debates—can slow decisions. There’s still a big education component; many customers are learning what a microgrid is and what it takes to implement one. And these projects sit at the intersection of utilities, operations, and finance, which makes them inherently multi-stakeholder and complex.
One way we address that is with energy-as-a-service models through EcoStruxture. Instead of owning every asset and focusing only on savings, customers pay for energy and resilience as a service, more like a long-term PPA or a second utility. The provider handles design, financing, construction, and long-term operations.
Tracy: If you had to sum up where this is all heading, how would you describe it?
Jana: Resilience, decarbonization, and electrification are reshaping how buildings and infrastructure think about energy. Microgrids and distributed energy resources will be central to meeting those goals—whether you’re a winery, a data center, a logistics hub, or a public agency.
No single company can do it alone. It will take ecosystems of utilities, technology providers, developers, financiers, and customers working together. Schneider Electric’s role is to be a strong, interoperable partner and help accelerate the transition to more resilient, more sustainable, and more intelligent energy systems.
Tracy: Jana, thanks for the conversation.
Jana: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.
