SAN DIEGO
Making San Diego smarter with microgrids
The City of San Diego is partnering with Gridscape to deploy eight solar microgrids throughout the city. Project benefits include backup power for the community during power shut off events, leveraging of new energy investments in DAC communities, increased emergency capability for neighbourhood services, reduced greenhouse emissions, access to EV charging stations and avoided energy cost savings of over $6 million cumulative over 25 years to the city.
What exactly is a microgrid?
A microgrid is a self-contained power system that supplies electricity to a specific geographic area, such as a college campus, medical complex, shopping mall, or neighbourhood.
One or more types of distributed energy (solar panels, wind turbines, cogeneration, generators) are used to generate electricity within microgrids. Furthermore, many new microgrids have energy accumulators, which are often batteries. Electric vehicle charging stations are also available.
About Gridscape
Gridscape is a leading innovative energy solutions company specializing in developing and implementing standardized innovative products and solutions for Microgrid and EV charging systems. Our solutions provide energy savings, operational efficiency and enable our customers to save energy, operate efficiently and achieve sustainable development goals.
Gridscapeâs solution is unique, and it differentiates from traditional systems in the following manner.
1
Product Centric Approach (vs Project Centric Methodology) for scalability, maintainability, and longevity of microgrid assets.
2
Software driven architecture resulting in no technology obsolescence and ability to adapt to changing PG&E tariffs and distribution grid conditions.
3
Dynamically configurable. That is, an ability to change the microgrid operating modes on demand.
Energy Information System: A cloud-based distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) that includes:
A smart AI-based energy management and optimized load and generation dispatch; and
A very powerful visualization dashboard for accessing real time and historical data about PV, storage and EV charging stations.
Gridscape EnergyScopeTM Dashboards
Inherently Integrated with EV charging infrastructure.
Full Energy Management including demand charge reduction, TOU arbitrage, grid services, interconnected network of microgrids.
The Project
Our project in San Diego is a prominent one and holds value in many ways.
The city expects to prioritize eight binding sites: three recreation centers, a fire, and three police stations. These eight microgrids will improve the city to decrease electricity use by 25% below 2010 levels by 2035. The solar emergency microgrids to be installed in the town are financed and owned by Shell New Energies. The result expecting from this project is a saving of energy cost approx. $420,854 annually.
The project consists of 960 kW of solar PV systems in various rooftop and carport configurations, 2175 kWh of battery energy storage systems and twelve EV charging stations.
The project will save approx. $420,854 in utility costs annually.Â
Year 1 (FY23) avoided energy costs (savings) are estimated at $57,000. The project is expected to generate cumulative 25-year avoided energy costs of $6,000,000
The project will also offset 2175 MT of GHG annually.Â
The project will reduce the peak demand and will contribute to additional cost savings.
Other benefits worth mentioning
Community Benefit and Renewable Energy Equity
In this time and age, it is crucial to strengthen our green energy equity.
Climate Action Plan and SB 100
Significant progress towards meeting the Cityâs Climate action plan and States GHG emission goal by 2045. The deployment will provide a roadmap to how San Diego could deploy a large number of microgrid in meeting its Climate Action goals and resiliency needs.
Cityâs Leadership role in California
No other city in California has deployed 8 âsmallâ microgrids across police stations, fire stations and community centers. Once the project is deployed, it will serve as a model for microgrid deployment across California. Microgrid deployments are key to California meeting its SB100 goals. It will also position City of San Diego favourably with CEC for future grants.
Resiliency and Grid Stability
PSPS events and other power shut offs events create huge disruptions across San Diego and California. All these microgrids will provide backup power to the sites in case of a power shut off event due to wildfire, Earthquake and other unforeseen circumstances
EV Charging Infrastructure
EV Charging Infrastructure at each site, powered by clean renewable power, will pave-way for future electrification of the city fleet of emergency and maintenance vehicles.Â
Design
The project will be based on the system design and architecture with minor alterations as shown in following figure.
As of now, the project is in design phase, and it will be ready for permitting by the end of December 2021.
The Sites
The eight critical facilities are listed here:
Dolores Magdaleno Memorial Recreation Centre
2902 Marcy Ave, San Diego, CA 92113 (DAC Site)
Cesar Chavez Recreation Centre/Larsen Field
455 Sycamore Road, San Ysidro CA 92113 (DAC Site)
Southcrest Recreation Center
4149 Newton Ave, San Diego, CA 92113 (DAC Site)
Fire Station #19
3434 Ocean View Blvd, San Diego, CA 92113 (DAC Site)
Fire Station #29
198 W San Ysidro Blvd, San Ysidro, CA 92173
Police Station â Northeastern Division
13396 Salmon River Road, San Diego, CA 92129
Police Station â Mid-City
4310 Landis Street, San Diego, CA 92105
Police Station â South eastern Division
7222 Skyline Drive, San Diego, CA 82114
The first three sites are Parks & Recreation sites that serve as emergency shelters for the community during natural disasters.
Project Financing
Four of the eight sites are disadvantaged communities (DAC sites). Financed by Shell New Energies, Gridscape is the project developer and OAM provider of the project with partial funding coming from California Energy Commission (CEC) under EPIC grant.
