Recent power shutdowns by Pacific Gas &Electric (PGE) — and the likelihood of more to come — has renewed the urgency of a microgrid feasibility study being carried out for the Northern California City of Calistoga.
California utilities undertake the shutdowns, known as Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) when wildfire risk heightens. PGE carried out its first PSPS of 2019 in June.
Clean Coalition, which is carrying out the microgrid feasibility assessment, is now working with PGE, Calistoga’s city manager and city council to scope out and design a community microgrid that will encompass a designated resilience zone to ensure electricity for critical public services and facilities during the power shutdowns, said Frank Wasko, Clean Coalition managing director.
“We’re meeting with senior city staff, and we’ll be moving forward and conducting a solar siting survey for all Calistoga. At the same time, we’re implementing stakeholder outreach with key leaders and members of the community to help guide our scoping efforts and allow us to determine an optimal system size and design that can be implemented as soon as possible,” Wasko said in an interview with Microgrid Knowledge.
Searching for the most effective, near-term solutions
Clean Coalition’s project team expects stakeholder outreach to be completed in three to four weeks, said Malini Kannan, program engineer.
“At that point, we’ll have a lot more information…project scoping will be pretty well tightened up, and we’ll be able to proceed with system sizing and design, then proceed to explore all relevant solutions,” she said in an interview.
Kannan added that Calistoga’s city leaders are looking for the most effective, near-term solutions. “So we’re going to be focusing on individual, critical facilities. We have a few front-runners, but we won’t know exactly which will be included in the feasibility assessment until the stakeholder outreach process is completed,” she told Microgrid Knowledge.
Recent Comments