The Blue Lake Rancheria is adding a new project to its portfolio of microgrid projects, which will enable a gas station and convenience store to be powered independent of the grid during emergencies.

The new $1.85 million microgrid project, which is called Solar +, is scheduled to break ground this summer. The project received $1.5 million from the California Energy Commission’s Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC) program. The program supports research that helps California meet its energy and greenhouse gas reduction goals.

The microgrid has a 60 kilowatt (kW) photovoltaic (PV) system and 174 kilowatt hour (kWh) battery storage unit. The Solar+ project will also install new electric vehicle charging stations at the gas station and build the system so it can be replicated in similar- sized gas stations/convenience stores throughout California.

The Solar+ microgrid will allow gas pumps and a convenience store to be powered by the microgrid. A diesel generator is the only current backup.

“The Blue Lake Rancheria microgrid projects not only create energy resiliency for the Blue Lake community, it supports California’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030,” said Energy Commissioner Karen Douglas.

The Solar + microgrid allows the Rancheria to add to the energy resiliency provided by an existing microgrid called the Low-Carbon Community Microgrid Project that can operate independent of the grid. That existing microgrid, which received $5 million in funds from the Energy Commission, can power the Blue Lake Rancheria casino, hotel and a Red Cross evacuation center by employing a 500kW solar photovoltaic system and a 950kWh battery storage system.

While microgrids have been installed as a backup power at military bases and universities, their use is fairly new on tribal lands like Blue Lake Rancheria. The microgrid at the rancheria is in an isolated area 15 miles east of Eureka in an area prone to forest fires, earthquakes and tsunamis.

Leaders at the Blue Lake Rancheria looked into building microgrids after the magnitude 9 Tohoku earthquake rocked Japan in March 2011. The jolt sent tsunami waves across the Pacific Ocean, with residents on California’s North Coast on alert for a devastating surge. More than 1,000 people were evacuated from the Arcata area inland to the rancheria’s casino parking lot.

Photo courtesy of Siemens USA.

Wood chips are normally associated with barbeques, but in the mountainous areas of the High Sierra, this abundant renewable resource is being used to heat more than just grills.

Plumas County officials recently celebrated the installation of a new biomass heating system that uses wood chips from forest thinning and fire-reduction activities for its 53,000-square foot Health and Human Services Center in Quincy. Funding for the project came from the California Energy Commission.

The center was built in 2006, but its geothermal-based heating system proved to be too small. The new combined heat and power system produces heat, but generates enough energy to offset what is required to run the boiler. The system is expected to save the county about $30,000 annually.

The Sierra Institute for Community and Environment, a nonprofit organization that works with rural communities to increase stewardship of forest lands, managed the project, which received a $2.6 million Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC) grant. The EPIC program invests about $160 million annually for clean energy innovations, strategies, and applications that help the state meet its energy and greenhouse gas emission reduction goals.

Plumas County, which includes the Plumas National Forest, has a land base of more than 2,600 square miles, but only about 20,000 residents.

Because of its remote location and small population, the area lacks access to natural gas supplies. The Health and Human Services Center project is part of a larger state plan to maximize locally available renewable energy resources to meet the needs of rural communities.

Photo courtesy of Sierra Institute for Community and Environment.

The Palo Alto-based Tesla Inc. may be best known for its sleek electric cars, but the cars are only part of a larger corporate strategy that includes battery storage and battery power in homes and in commercial and industrial applications.

“Our goal is not to build more cars, it’s creating an energy shift,” said Jeffrey Straubel, Tesla’s chief technical officer, during an April 2 talk at the California Energy Commission. Straubel said the energy shift has a lot to do with moving transportation and energy generation away from fossil fuels. In the automotive realm, Tesla is eager to bring electric cars and semis to roadways.

The shift for homes and businesses is playing out with battery storage, where Tesla sees its success defined by modularity and scalability, Straubel said.

The lithium-ion battery products are the Powerwall, for home applications, and the Powerpack, for commercial and industrial power needs.

“These products can scale in parallel,” said Straubel.

With the Powerwall, which integrates with a home solar system, the philosophy was simplicity. It arrives to a homeowner in a single box.

“If you look at solar or battery installations of even a few years ago you can see that it was, literally, a mess,” Straubel said.

Tesla has integrated the inverter into the battery pack. “So installation is easy – there’s no awkward collaboration with contractors and installers, and you won’t have a bunch of different boxes on a wall.”

Straubel said the Powerwall integrates into the home of future.

“If you can link all of these together… if you can include heating and cooking, that is completely electric, then you’ve made a pretty enormous dent in your carbon footprint,” he said. The Powerpack is the commercial and industrial version of the Powerwall. Tesla invented its own inverter-charger and controls so Powerpacks can quickly be deployed in the field.

“We wanted to keep it as simple and modular as possible,” Straubel said.

Tesla’s installation of the 100-megawatt capacity Hornsdale Power Reserve battery in Southern Australia illustrates the company’s success with speed and simplicity, he said.

The origin of the battery project stems from the Australian government decision to install a battery system connected to the 99-turbine Hornsdale Wind Farm. The urgency for the battery system stems from a series of regional Australian blackouts in 2016 and 2017.

The $50 million project drew a lot of attention as the world’s largest grid-scale battery and Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s promise that Tesla would deliver and install the Powerpacks in 100 days, or it would be free.

Building on the battery project began September 20, 2017, with regulatory testing starting before December 1. The system provides a total of 129 megawatt-hours of storage and provides grid stability by preventing load-shedding blackouts.

Powerpacks can also be installed and operate in parallel. At Hornsdale, this meant Powerpacks were powered up while others were being delivered or installed.

Eighteen months ago, Royal Dutch Shell opened a new division dedicated to exploring opportunities in low-carbon power and transportation fuel. It’s a business strategy focused on survival.

Known mainly as an oil and natural gas company, Shell is taking the long view, said Marc van Gerven, vice president of solar at Shell’s New Energies Division, during a March 29 talk at the California Energy Commission.

“Society is starting to ask us for these solutions and we are trying to move with society, along the path of the energy transition,” he said.

Between 2018 and 2020, Shell intends to spend between $1 to $2 billion of its $25 to $30 billion in annual capital investments in what van Gerven called “emerging opportunities” – projects adjacent to the company’s core assets that help it evolve with the energy market.

These ventures are now the purview of the New Energies division, which has based its U.S. operations in San Francisco. The division is focusing on new fuels and renewable electricity, which plays a major role in a technically possible, but challenging path developed by Shell to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Power will hopefully become a “new business pillar for Shell in decades to come,” van Gerven said.

Shell has started by investing in commercially viable technologies like offshore wind and solar.

At the Port of Stockton, the company built a photovoltaic project to provide onsite solar power to its fuels distribution terminal. While the project is only expected to produce more than 300,000 kilowatt hours each year, it provided development and permitting experience that informed efforts to build another solar project at a Shell facility in Australia, van Gerven said.

In January, Shell expanded its solar offerings by becoming the largest shareholder of Silicon Ranch, a Tennessee-based solar energy developer that contracts with utilities, solar cooperatives, municipal utilities, and commercial and industrial customers.

Through the New Energies division, Shell is also investing in alternative, low-carbon fuels and technology, including infrastructure for electric and hydrogen fuel-cell cars. The company has received funding from the Energy Commission’s Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Technology Program to build several hydrogen refueling stations at its gas stations in California.