SPBMI
San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians
San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians in partnership with Gridscape and Green Realities has deployed a community microgrid at the San Pasqual tribal area.
The tribal area has seven buildings including the main administrative building, educational center, police station and a fire department. The tribal area is located in the very high fire threat area and frequently suffers from power cuts from the local utility due to its remote location.
This Gridscape powered community microgrid will provide backup power to all the buildings during power cut events and save energy costs at the same time. The project is partially funded by a DOE grant.
For tribal areas, solar microgrid can be the best solution as it can provide security, accessibility and affordability. This can provide a sense of safety with regards to any potential power outages.
What exactly is a microgrid?
Microgrids are localized energy grids that help facility owners take control back from the traditional grid, maintain a stable flow of power, and lock in utility rates.Â
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.
Local, self-generation of power can be great for anyone who wants control over energy costs.
The Project
The project will consist of the following
1
New 156.8 kW Solar Carport PV system. Integrated with existing 24 kw solar at the Educational center.
2
240kW/480kWh kWh EnergyScopeTM Microgrid ESS battery system, located at the designated area.
3
Six EV charging stations.
4
A critical load panel to power all emergency loads during a grid outage including a community charging station / emergency shelter for phone and laptop charging.
5
150kW Liquid Propane fueled generator and storage tank.
6
Electrical and structural infrastructure upgrades.
The project will save approx. $78,286 in energy costs annually.
The project will also offset 112 MT of GHG annually.
The project will reduce the peak demand and will contribute to additional cost savings.
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 its final phase of completion and will be operational soon.
Gridscape Overview
Gridscape is the largest developer of small to mid-sized solar microgrid product and technology in California. It is focused on deploying state of the art Microgrid integrated with EV charging solutions aimed at reducing overall energy cost for a site and providing backup clean emergency power during PSPS or other power disruption events. It has been awarded several CEC grants to design and deploy cost-effective, standards-based solar emergency microgrids at fire stations, municipal buildings and so on.
Gridscape team has extensive experience in deploying highly efficient and integrated smart grid hardware and software solutions in EV charging and renewable solar, storage and microgrid system; unlike traditional microgrid developers, Gridscape employs a holistic product centric, artificial intelligence (AI) based software-driven approach to designing, deploying, and managing microgrids.
It also integrates Electric Vehicle (EV) charging and other controllable loads into its solution. Through its broad partnerships with various Tier 1 and Tier 2 financiers, energy storage manufacturers and other renewable energy product providers, it leverages the best-in-class mix of technology and finance to provide maximum return on investment to customers.
Gridscape EnergyScopeTM Dashboards
Gridscapeâs solution is unique, and it differentiates from traditional systems in the following manner.
Product Centric Approach (vs Project Centric Methodology) for scalability, maintainability, and longevity of microgrid assets
Software driven architecture resulting in no technology obsolescence and ability to adapt to changing PG&E tariffs and distribution grid conditions. 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.
Inherently Integrated with EV charging infrastructure full energy management including demand charge reduction, TOU arbitrage, grid services Interconnected network of microgrids.
Other Project Details
The following is a partial list of the solar microgrid projects deployed or in the process of being deployed by Gridscape in 2021
