The hoopa valley reservation faces significant fire and earthquake risk and faces barriers to decarbonization and clean energy deployment and suffers from very low electricity reliability

This federal Project Grant award of $590,157 was provided by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs through the Tribal Energy Development Capacity (TEDC) Grants program (CFDA 15.148). The grant funding will enable the Hoopa Valley Public Utilities District (HVPUD), a federally recognized tribal government entity, to develop a community microgrid plan and detailed engineering designs for the Hoopa Valley Reservation.

The key deliverables of this two-year project, with an award date of August 12, 2024 and a planned completion date of August 11, 2026, include a finalized microgrid plan, detailed engineering designs, and a draft interconnection agreement for the proposed community microgrid. The microgrid will integrate 7.7 MW of battery energy storage, 6 MW of in-front-of-the-meter solar, 0.4 MW of behind-the-meter solar, and 0.5 MW of small hydroelectric generation. This project builds upon previous HVPUD efforts to assess the reservation's energy needs and resilience requirements, working in collaboration with regional tribal entities and the Schatz Energy Research Center.

This proposal by the hoopa valley public utilities district hvpud a tribal energy development organization is designed to carry forward the momentum created by a soon to be completed 2022 emdp hvpud microgrid planning project. The proposed project will result in a finalized microgrid plan detailed engineering designs and a draft interconnection agreement for the community microgrid through three tasks mirroring these results. The microgrid team is led by linnea jackson general manager of hvpud. The primary consultant for this project will be the schatz energy research center at CAL poly humboldt. Margaret schaff and evan dewitt of native energy resources counsel LLC will provide legal support. The 2022 project allowed the microgrid team sufficient information to work with the blue lake rancheria tribe karuk tribe yurok tribe redwood coast energy authority rcea and schatz under a memorandum of agreement to develop a grant proposal for multiple microgrids for areas served by the pacific gas and electric PG e hoopa 1101 distribution circuit in response to funding opportunity announcement FOA DEFOA0003195 under the grid resilience and innovation partnerships program grip issued by the united states department of energy DOE grid deployment office GDO and office of clean energy demonstrations oced. The microgrid team is now also applying for funding to build a hoopa valley reservation community microgrid through the PG e microgrid incentive program MIP. Technical discussions are just beginning with PG e. Our microgrid team is continuing to develop all aspects of a community wide microgrid to serve the reservation loads. The components of the microgrid will include a 7.7 megawatts MW 2HOUR battery energy storage system sized to match the hoopa 1101 substation for stable islanded operations 6 MW of infrontofthemeter ifom solar 0.4 MW of behindthemeter BTM solar 0.5 MW of small lowimpact hydroelectric a circuitwide microgrid controller and a generation system controller. The microgrid will allow for an expansion of hvpuds electric tribal utility services to all reservation loads. The utilitys microgrid income will include customer payments through low costbased rates participation in caiso markets and renewable energy credits. Utility ratebased charges are a standard method of recovering generation infrastructure investment costs. A major revenue stream for the microgrid is through participation in the caiso electricity market. Under bluesky operation the microgrid can participate in capacity wholesale energy and ancillary services markets. IT can also generate revenue by offering demand response services to the grid operator and through energy arbitrage. Another source of revenue for the microgrid is renewable energy certificates recs.job creation associated with microgrid development would include construction and operations and maintenance related jobs. Construction phasethe microgrid project at the redwood coast airport created 40 jobs during the construction