Resilient Palisades Looks To Build Solar-Powered Microgrid

PACIFIC PALISADES, CA — Resilient Palisades wants to bring microgrid technology to the Palisades, boosting energy infrastructure while lowering harmful emissions in the process. The organization is asking the community to complete a survey to monitor interest and inform pricing decisions.

The first phase of the plan will install solar "nanogrids" at homes, businesses, schools and other buildings in the Palisades. Once the equipment is in place, all the nanogrids will be connected into one microgrid, offering increased energy resiliency and lowering electricity bills.

The organization hopes to start signing people up for phase 1 this fall, and to have the entire microgrid set up within a few years.

"Not only is the Pailsades a fairly isolated community, but we're underserved in terms of electricity," Ryan Craig, Co-Lead of the Resilient Palisades Clean Energy Resilience Team, told Patch. "LADWP five years ago tried to put in an additional distributing station, but neighbors rose up and didn't want it. They recently put out a request for proposals seeing distributive energy resources for the Palisades, and in our view, the answer has to involve solar, and should involve a microgrid."

Microgrids have garnered increased attention recently, especially in the wake of February's winter storm in Texas that caused massive power crises across the state. A handful of microgrids currently exist in the country, but Reslient Palisades aims to be one of the first to place a grid in an existing community, and the first to do so in Southern California.

"We're working with a group called EcoBlock, which is affiliated with [UC Berkeley], and they're doing a microgrid in Oakland," Craig said. "We're leveraging their learnings to do it down here, the first one in southern California."

Most of the project will be privately funded, with fundraising opportunities coming at a later stage.

"There are 10,000 homeowners in the Palisades," Craig said. "There are already probably hundreds who already have solar, who we'll make sure are participating. We're hoping to get into the thousands."

Community members can fill out the survey here.