Scrolling through my newsfeed this morning, I came across this story out of Salem, Oregon. For those who don’t have time to click the link, Oregon is getting its first ever community micro-grid. Here are some details from the article:
“The small-scale electrical grid, which combines energy sources like a generator and solar panels, will provide emergency power to Salem's Public Works building, 96 units in six apartment buildings, 34 homes, four government buildings and one business in the event of a power outage like the 2021 ice storm.
The 2021 storm caused massive, city-wide outages, leaving tens of thousands of residents without power for days. People lost food, struggled to stay warm and fled to emergency shelters and motels to power vital medical equipment.
The project comes after the city, in partnership with Portland General Electric, received a $1 million grant from the Oregon Department of Energy through the Community Renewable Energy Grant Program.”
For those unfamiliar with the 2021 ice storm, on February 12th last year, Salem and the surrounding area got pummeled by ice for about an hour in the evening. The event destroyed 18% of the area’s canopy, damaged property, and knocked down a ton of power lines, cutting off power to 260 thousand residents. Salem’s government declared a state of emergency.
I believe there were also power outages in Salem during the great Pacific Northwest heatwave of 2021. And this past summer, thousands of customers in the city lost power for a good part of one day.
Given the recent events, it makes sense that Salem would seek to buttress the reliability their traditional grid offers.
They are not the first west coast municipality to develop a micro-grid, and they won’t be the last.
Take the Redwood Coast Energy Authority, for example. The coalition of local governments around Humboldt county decided to build a new micro-grid about two years ago. The coalition collaborated with the Schatz Energy Research Center at Humboldt State University to make it happen.
Then there was also the well publicized case of Blue Lake Rancheria a few years ago. The tiny federally recognized tribe in Humboldt County began work on their microgrid in 2011 out of fear of a tsunami like the one that had just hit Japan. As the decade went on, however, it became clear that the microgrid would more likely protect them from another kind of disaster: the ever more frequent wildfires terrorizing northern California.
As extreme events, whether they be ice storms, heat waves, or wildfires, continue to become more commonplace in the West, so will microgrids. As most on this forum know, however, microgrids are no panacea. There simply are no silver bullets when it comes to grid reliability.