Cascadia Renewables’ (CR) early energy system design process used traditional manual methods—spreadsheets, hourly load profiles, and synthetic outage scenarios—to size the PV and battery energy storage system (BESS). This methodology was born in their roots as off-grid solar and storage designers and installers.
However, the CR team kept encountering client goals that couldn’t be met with PV and batteries alone. That realization pushed them to shift from framing their work around products to start framing it around problems and outcomes.
Through this process it became obvious that the solutions their clients needed exist within a much larger ecosystem—utilities, communities, local governments, businesses, and emergency managers—each occupying the same physical and electrical space, but each trying to solve different challenges on different timelines.
Shifting from thinking in terms of “solar + storage” to thinking in terms of microgrids opened up this systems-level view.
“We came from the residential and commercial solar side of the industry and have been moving into the microgrid space. What Xendee is doing allows customers, developers, and installers to make that switch.” - Markus Virta, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Cascadia Renewables
CR’s initial approach provided them a strong baseline, but it couldn’t fully capture the nonlinear relationships among solar variability, generator runtime, competing prioritization of grid demands and resilience goals, and evolving load patterns.
That’s where Xendee, a leading microgrid optimization and techno-economic modeling platform, entered the process. Working alongside MZ Solar Consulting, Cascadia was able to use Xendee to translate their preliminary microgrid system architectures into full simulation environments.
“Tools like Xendee accelerate that shift to solving complex, multi-stakeholder energy problems with flexible, resilient, and future-proof solutions. They force a designer to consider how multiple technologies can be combined, controlled, and optimized across a range of operating scenarios.” - Callum McSherry, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Cascadia Renewables
Optimization isn’t just about performance; it’s about credibility. Funders, utilities, and permitting agencies increasingly expect microgrid proposals to demonstrate modeled performance data aligned with both safety and programmatic metrics.
By integrating Xendee into their workflow, Cascadia Renewables can deliver feasibility studies that are technically rigorous, investment-ready, and rooted in community goals.
When data, design, and community needs align, resilience stops being theoretical; it becomes measurable.
Cascadia Renewables has now completed over 100 detailed feasibility studies with Xendee as the core engine behind their microgrid design and optimization process. They currently have 20 microgrid implementation projects in various stages of development—all of them optimized through the Xendee platform.
Collectively, these projects represent more than 10 MWh of battery storage, 2 MW of solar PV, and multiple backup and prime-power generators, each paired with advanced microgrid controls. Every system configuration, operating mode, and dispatch strategy has been informed by Xendee’s optimization environment, ensuring technically sound, cost-effective, and grid-aware designs from the outset.
At Cascadia Renewables, optimization isn’t an afterthought; it’s the bridge between a concept and a buildable, fundable project.
The Orcas Center Case StudyWhen CR began designing the Orcas Center microgrid, they already knew the project had to deliver two kinds of value: operational efficiency during normal conditions and energy autonomy during extended outages. Achieving both simultaneously required more than static load calculations. It demanded dynamic, data-driven simulation.
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