Project teams on site at the Soboba Fire Station included, GRID Alternatives’ Daniel Dumovich, Director of Strategic Initiatives and Nicole Bloom, Project Manager of Strategic Initiative along with the Inland Empire chapter’s Executive Director Jaime Alonso; Invinity Energy Systems’ Jan Petrenko, Regional Manager North America; California Energy Commission’s  Sean Anayah, Energy Commission Specialist, Energy Infrastructure Integrity and Sustainability-Agreement Manager for Fire Station Microgrid and Zoe Higgerson, Utilities Engineer, Energy Systems Research Branch-Agreement Manager for MORBUGs; ONYX Power Operations Manager Aaron Dyer and Casey Reams, Engineering; and from the University of California, Riverside, Alfredo A. Martinez-Morales, Managing Director, Research Faculty, Southern California-Research Initiatives for Solar Energy and Miroslav Penchev, Project Scientist.

Soboba Fire Chief Glenn Patterson said the solar panels and Invinity Energy Systems’ non-lithium battery backup have been installed at the station. He added that this solar and battery backup microgrid will not only offset energy costs but will provide power to the fire station and the Emergency Operations Center during an emergency or natural disaster ensuring emergency management personnel are able to continue to operate and serve the Soboba Indian Reservation.

GRID Alternatives was awarded a California Energy Commission grant for a microgrid community solar project and battery backup system on the reservation. The solar panels were installed on a carport used for employee and visitor parking. The resilient battery backup system can last 6-10 hours in case of power shut offs at the fire station, which will be an emergency source of power for the community.

With CEC EPIC Support, GRID Alternatives, ONYX Power and UC Riverside are partnering with Tribal communities to demonstrate and deploy grid-independent, modular generation systems to enable California’s Tribal communities to provide power when the grid is down, as well as mobile off-grid resources for facilities throughout the year. The generators provide immediate, flexible and scalable relief to families who are impacted the most by wildfires and grid outages, without the pollution and hazards associated with small portable gas generators.

Community Development & Tribal Program Manager Lisa Castilone said, “We are excited to use innovative technologies to advance climate resiliency in Tribal communities in California. This project will provide essential power to the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians Fire Station for the reservation, and the surrounding communities. This project will not only allow emergency services to continue during outages but will also reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate disasters that cause the outages in the first place.”

The Mobile Renewable Backup Generation, known as MORBUG, is for deployable community energy. Created by Casey Reams and Aaron R. Dyer of ONYX Power, the portable RHINO technology generators can provide quiet and clean power anywhere. The system has already been used at recent events on the reservation and has shown promise as a viable alternative to commonly used gas-powered generators. Dyer said he was told by Public Works that one was recently used on a construction site, with great success.

Many employees from Soboba’s Public Works Department were given a hands-on demonstration and explanation of how MORBUG and its solar blankets work and what to expect from their performance. That department, along with Soboba’s Emergency Services division, will oversee the storage and deployment of them. Ten units have already been delivered and are intended to be used much more for fun than for emergencies, although they can be used at residences if needed and requested. Being one of the first projects to utilize them, it is hoped that Soboba can offer a template for other Tribes to follow.

California’s Tribal communities are highly impacted by planned and unplanned power shut offs and grid outages due to their rural locations. Entire communities are often left without power, and many critical facilities are left inoperable. Not only can this greatly limit disaster response, but the dependence on gas generators exacerbates climate change and poses direct health and fire risks to the communities that depend on them. ONYX Power’s Rhino technology is quiet, emissions-free, can be deployed in real-time, can expand in energy capacity, requires no lead time nor permitting, can power a home through a transfer switch like a generator, and the batteries and inverter can be replaced or upgraded in the future. The battery units can be paired with rapidly deployable solar units.

GRID Alternatives Inland Empire Executive Director Jaime Alonso said, “We can provide adaptive technologies that don’t depend on large investments in terms of infrastructure. One of the biggest things we see in extremely rural areas is initial reluctance so education is a key component to our work in terms of showing what the value is and that really just takes relationship building and continuous engagement.”

He cited the long-term relationship GRID has with Soboba and is grateful the Tribe is progressive and open to new ideas. “Working with Tribal nations is something we see as essential to our mission. It lines up to our core mission to advance economic environmental justice through renewable energy.”

Alfredo A. Martinez-Morales, from UCR’s Bourns College of Engineering, is part of a four-member team. “The role of the university is to validate the performance of the technology,” he said. “These projects are intended to de-risk the technology, meaning to document, in the form of a case study, how well it performs and the benefits that are achieved through the project. So our job is to basically make sure the correct data has been collected and then analyze the data and draw certain conclusions based on the data as well as potentially make recommendations.”

Martinez-Morales said there is a combination of things that will be helpful to the end user, which is Soboba in this case, in showing how they can manage their system more efficiently but also it’s a product that is delivered to the CEC so that it becomes available to the public so all the facilities that may want to use this technology can see what went well, any opportunities for improvements, etc.

“We are involved in all the meetings with different groups within the project and provide feedback as the project develops,” he said. “At this point, a lot has been focused on the construction phase.”

He said the project is going well and a major milestone is on the horizon. “Once the system is fully constructed and commissioned, that’s a huge deal and I think we are getting very close to that now.”

GRID Alternatives is a national leader in making clean, affordable solar power and solar jobs accessible to low-income communities and communities of color, and its energy access work is powering off-grid communities across the globe. GRID’s vision: a successful transition to clean, renewable energy that includes everyone. GRID’s Tribal Program helps tribal communities become self-sustaining by providing resources to assist with their clean energy goals.

For more information, www.gridalternatives.org/ie or 951-272-GRID(4743).

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“The project will accommodate future growth, including the installation of EV chargers and the possible integration of a larger microgrid.” Daniel B. Dumovich, Director of Strategic Initiatives at GRID Alternatives, said. The need for this project is significant. The Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians reservation is located in a Tier 3 Extreme High Fire Threat Zone and has experienced 17 grid outages in the past three years, including 8 in 2019. The average outage duration is seven hours, but some have lasted longer than 24 hours during high wind conditions and public safety power shutoff events. The outages affect both the safety and the quality of life of both tribal members and surrounding communities and conditions could be exacerbated during an emergency such as a natural disaster, resulting in longer outages.

The Soboba Fire Station serves the tribe and surrounding communities with fire and emergency services but it is subject to the same outages as the rest of the community, with only a costly, highly polluting diesel generator as backup. The tribe has also expressed an interest in expanding educational opportunities in the clean energy economy that currently does not exist there.

This solar-charged, long-duration energy storage and critical resilience project will uniquely solve the issues described above. The system consists of 50 kW/500 kWh of energy storage and 50 kW of solar photovoltaic panels. The daily operations of the system will cut electric bills significantly for the tribe and bring in demand response revenues. During the grid outages described above, the system will provide at least 10 hours of backup service, with the potential to provide 24 or more hours during times of high exposure to the sun’s rays, where the battery storage can recharge from the solar PV.

This potential for long backup power will be especially effective during major emergency events, where the system can convert the Soboba Fire Station into a community emergency center.

An added benefit to the project is that Soboba is recruiting tribal members for job-training opportunities. GRID Alternatives will provide essential workforce development training to prepare tribal members to enter the clean energy economy. These paid job training positions will allow trainees to gain vital hands-on experience and valuable skills related to the project, including solar installation, energy system management, advanced energy storage integration and other topics that will help them advance in their renewable energy-related careers.

But the advantages to this project go beyond the Soboba reservation. This project will bolster the technological advancement of renewable energy-charged, long-duration storage and resilience technologies in other tribal communities and in low-income communities. By proving the unique business case for serving a critical emergency facility in a tribal community with this integrated technology, this project will open the door for similar systems to be sited and serve tribal, remote and disadvantaged communities across the state.

Specifically for Soboba, the system will reduce electric bills for the tribe by more than $13,000 annually, with total savings of about $300,000 over the 20-year lifetime of the system. The system will increase overall grid reliability by serving an extremely high fire threat section that experiences frequent outages and PSPS events. The reliability value to the tribe is exceptionally high due to the ability to provide fire and emergency services during an outage.

The fire station will have electricity during emergencies and can serve the surrounding community for at least 10 hours, and more than 24 hours with the inclusion of solar PV, helping to increase public safety. Bringing generation sources closer to the end-use will greatly increase the tribe’s energy security as well.

This system will lower greenhouse gasses (GHGs) by 537,423 kg (1,182,331 lbs) and nitrous oxides (NOx) by 485 kg (1,066 lbs) over 20 years compared to a baseline of no system installed. The public health benefits of this project are the increased services during outages and emergencies, as well as the avoided social cost of carbon and particulate matter from diesel generators.

GRID Alternatives is a nonprofit and national leader in providing access to clean, affordable renewable energy, transportation and jobs to economic and environmental justice communities nationwide. GRID’s workforce development programs provide hands-on training to connect people to clean energy jobs. GRID Alternatives’ National Tribal Program has worked since 2010 to help Tribal communities across the United States achieve their renewable energy goals. GRID maintains a long-term, strong and trusting working relationship with the Tribal communities selected for this project.

Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians | Contributed

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