The nation’s first carbon-free, microgrids are being introduced at the Santa Rita Union School District (SRUSD) in Salinas, California. The school district chose to invest in energy resilience by developing microgrids at each of its six campuses. During power outages, SRUSD schools will remain functional thanks to a well-controlled combination of solar and storage. The systems will be Powered Emergency Response Centers (PERCs) in the event of prolonged outages serving first-responders and the community with critical power indefinitely.

“We are proud to be pioneering a pathway to energy resilience here at SRUSD. We’ll be able to serve our school community in short-term outages, and if need be, throughout a prolonged outage, thanks to lots of solar, and lots of batteries!” said Dr. Shelly Morr, Superintendent at SRUSD. Thanks to a bundled power purchase agreement (PPA), financed by Generate Capital, the District has achieved its goal of being able to keep students on campus and at parity with its current cost of grid power, and no cost increase for 20 years. Dr. Morr adds, “Meanwhile, we cut our environmental footprint thanks to solar now powering our schools.”

Each campus at SRUSD has a sizeable solar system, large enough to completely eliminate its power bill. The systems range from 115 – 262 kW in size and are each mounted on top of solar-ports that provide shade for cars and lunch shelters. Each campus also has ~100 kW of battery storage, and an average of ~200 kWh of energy storage ready for discharge. When the grid goes down, solar generation and/or energy stored in the batteries will keep the campuses lit and operational. In addition to lighting efficiency upgrades, SRUSD invested its Proposition 39 allocations in wireless, energy management of its HVAC systems to control its major loads.

“An exciting aspect of this project is its great potential for resilience. These campuses can operate carbon-free and in an islanded microgrid mode for decades, literally. And to the technologies, we add the human element,” said Ted Flanigan, President of EcoMotion, the consultants who led the project. “At Santa Rita, the Superintendent’s Office, the Facilities Department, and the staff, teachers, and students all have active and defined roles during outages. They’ll take action to cut non-essential loads to maintain operations, a team effort.”

Sharp Electronics hired Black & Veatch to conduct the overall project engineering with construction expertly provided by MBL Energy. According to Robert Laubach, “MBL-Energy is extremely proud to be a part of this revolutionary and important project, honored to be a part of something that will pave the way for the future of solar and storage. We commend SRUSD for its foresight and recognition of the value these microgrids will add to the community.”

Critical to engineering the microgrid operation and bringing the project across the goal line to its completion has been Sharp’s Energy Systems and Services Group, Kirk Stokes, Director of Development for Sharp, said that, “It’s been our pleasure working on this cutting-edge project. While there have been challenges with operating protocols and interconnection requirements, at the end of the day we are pleased to have been an essential part of building an innovative model that makes sense for campuses and other facilities across the country.”

“It is my pleasure to own the project and to service the needs of the Santa Rita Union School District,” said Jigar Shah, CEO of Generate Capital. “My colleagues and I at Generate Capital, thank EcoMotion for its role envisioning the project and SolEd Benefit Corp of San Rafael for its initial development, and we commend SRUSD for being a leader in energy resilience, and to finding means of doing so without breaking the bank. We look forward to supporting similar projects that combine solar and storage to create remarkable levels of energy resilience.”