Solar Power World
Summary
In a big win for clean local energy and resilience in the Santa Barbara region, the Santa Barbara Unified School District (SBUSD) Board unanimously voted last week to proceed with Solar Microgrid projects throughout the District, along with additional standalone solar projects.
For the Santa Barbara Unified Solar Plus Energy Resiliency Project, the Clean Coalition, a nonprofit organization and Sage Energy Consulting completed feasibility studies for Solar Microgrid and standalone solar installations at 18 SBUSD sites. This was followed by designing and executing a state-of-the-art request for proposals (RFP) process for a 28-year fixed-rate power purchase agreement (PPA) for solar at 14 sites, with full Solar Microgrids at six of those sites.
As the best value from numerous excellent proposals submitted, Engie Services U.S. provided the winning bid to design, build, own and operate all the projects. The Solar Microgrids will feature solar and energy storage that can provide indefinite resilience to the most critical electric loads, which include refrigeration, communications and emergency staging. The rest of the loads will be maintained for a significant percentage of the time as well. The solar will be deployed in the form of solar parking canopies, and the benefiting parking lots will be staged for future deployments of electric vehicle charging infrastructure (EVCI).
In addition to millions of dollars in guaranteed bill savings through the fixed-rate PPA, and additional market opportunities that might arise from dispatchable solar energy, the SBUSD will enjoy millions of dollars in value from resilience benefits, for free:
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