How SBUSD’s Solar Microgrids Surpassed Expectations and Set a Model for Resilience

How SBUSD’s Solar Microgrids Surpassed Expectations and Set a Model for Resilience

Launched in 2020, the Santa Barbara Unified School District’s (SBUSD) Solar Microgrid and Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure (EVCI) project created six solar microgrids and eight standalone solar and storage sites. This pioneering project produced significant economic and resilience benefits to the district, far exceeding expectations. Now, the SBUSD Solar Microgrid and EVCI project has the opportunity to expand through the Microgrid Incentive Program (MIP), a grant initiative funded by Southern California Edison to support community microgrid development.

Currently, SBUSD and Clean Coalition are in the proposal stage of the MIP. While the Clean Coalition is actively working to procure the MIP grant, the SBUSD solar and storage project has already exceeded expectations.

The SBUSD solar and storage project of 2020 delivered a guaranteed bill savings of $7.8 million. However, today the energy bill savings are already surpassing the projected amount, tracking to more than $25 million due to rapidly increasing electricity rates. Additionally, the project gave the SBUSD over $6 million in Value-Of-Resilience (VOR) for free. VOR is the value energy resilience solar and storage provides, including the amount of time a location can stay operational during a power outage. 

In addition to the SBUSD solar and storage project’s high return on investment and increased resilience, it has been a spearheading effort in terms of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure (EVCI). Santa Barbara County’s Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) policy set out to deliver 251 charging ports across multiple county facilities in 2021, a year after the SBUSD solar and storage plus EVCI project. 

EV charging ports showcase how this project led Santa Barbara’s clean energy transition. The success of the SBUSD solar microgrids has set a precedent for Santa Barbara,  proving that clean solar energy is not only more sustainable, but also profitable, safer, and more reliable. 

Receiving a grant through the MIP would allow existing solar sites within SBUSD to be interconnected through a Community Microgrid. The SBUSD sites included in the Solar Microgrid and EVCI project currently have Behind-The-Meter (BTM) solar and storage, located on the customer’s side of the meter to provide on-site energy generation and storage. The MIP would incentivize Front-Of-Meter (FOM) storage additionally to the BTM solar and storage that exists. This FOM storage would be part of the utility grid and supply power to a Community Microgrid, supplying clean energy to a wider area. Although the final system size has not been determined, it will be designed to provide at least 24 hours of backup power for SBUSD and La Cuesta High School, as well as their food warehouse.

An SBUSD Community Microgrid is especially valuable because of its location in Goleta Load pocket, a transmission and disaster-vulnerable 70-mile stretch of the Southern California Coastline, from Point Conception to Lake Casitas, encompassing the cities of Goleta, Santa Barbara, Montecito, and Carpinteria. 

As the process of procuring the MIP continues, the Clean Coalition moves closer to the shared goal of a Community Microgrid for SBUSD, within the Goleta Load Pocket. A Community Microgrid in Santa Barbara would mean a coordinated local grid area served by one or more distribution substations and supported by high penetrations of local renewables and other distributed energy resources (DER), such as energy storage and demand response. Community Microgrids rely heavily on DER to achieve a more sustainable, secure, and cost-effective energy system while providing indefinite, renewables-driven backup power for prioritized loads. The Clean Coalition, SBUSD, and collaborators have the opportunity through the Microgrid Incentive Program to provide unparalleled economic, environmental, and resilience benefits to essential sites such as schools, and also to the Goleta Load Pocket as a whole.