As part of an ambitious project that aims to deploy a community microgrid that will help avoid outages due to fires, earthquakes, mudslides and other disasters in the Goleta Load Pocket, 40 MWh of utility-scale storage will go online in December.
Groundbreaking on the project, called the Vallecito Energy Storage Resilience (VESR) project, has just begun in the load pocket, which has been affected by the rolling blackouts imposed as a result of high temperatures and an energy shortage, according to the Clean Coalition. The organization initially envisioned and is facilitating the community microgrid project, called the Goleta Load Pocket Community Microgrid.
The storage will be up and running by the end of the year.
“You have 40 MWh of energy that will help make sure you don’t have to have rolling blackouts,” said Craig Lewis, founder and executive director, Clean Coalition.
VESR will be located in Carpinteria, Calif. and is the first piece of a community microgrid–planned to go online in 2025 or so–that will provide resilience to an area that desperately needs it. The storage will be owned by ORMAT, an independent power producer.
Good start for community microgrid
In order to provide 100% resilience, the area needs 200 MW of solar and 400 MWh of storage. “This will make up 40 MWh, 10% of what’s needed,” said Lewis. “This project is a good start.”
Meeting the solar and storage goal for the microgrid is achievable, he says. The goal represents about five times the solar now online in the area, and about 7% of the area’s technical solar siting potential on rooftops, parking lots and parking structures.
The Goleta Load Pocket, where mudslides in 2018 destroyed 400 homes and killed 23 people in the Montecito area, is home to about 300,000 people.
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