NEWS A Fruitvale Microgrid Could Inspire Resiliency if ApprovedJune 8, 2023

A Fruitvale Microgrid Could Inspire Resiliency — if Approved

Two dozen homes in Oakland’s Fruit­vale neigh­bor­hood are band­ing togeth­er to give their block a first-of-its-kind sus­tain­abil­i­ty makeover. The EcoBlock, a UC Berke­ley research project col­lab­o­rat­ing with the com­mu­ni­ty, aims to afford­ably retro­fit urban neigh­bor­hoods to have small­er car­bon foot­prints and more reli­able energy.

Dur­ing its sev­en years in the mak­ing, the EcoBlock project has pushed through sky­rock­et­ing costs, per­mit­ting red tape, and com­pro­mis­es with Pacif­ic Gas and Elec­tric. Although researchers antic­i­pat­ed bring­ing upgrades to res­i­dents’ homes this spring, the lin­ger­ing effects of the pan­dem­ic on sup­ply chains and costs are still hold­ing the project back. “Between COVID and infla­tion, our bud­get was just wal­loped,” says Therese Pef­fer, the prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor on the EcoBlock research team.

If the project is even­tu­al­ly imple­ment­ed, the 25 Fruit­vale homes par­tic­i­pat­ing in the EcoBlock can look for­ward to improved air qual­i­ty, low­ered water usage, and green­er ener­gy with new effi­cient elec­tric appli­ances, air ven­ti­la­tion, water-recy­cling laun­dry, and a shared elec­tric vehi­cle. The EcoBlock cen­ters around a key piece of infra­struc­ture: a small, local­ized ener­gy sys­tem known as a microgrid.

By con­nect­ing to solar ener­gy, a micro­grid could pro­vide the neigh­bors with elec­tric­i­ty dur­ing black­outs or PG&E’s pub­lic safe­ty pow­er shut-offs dur­ing extreme weath­er events. And it’s been proven to work: In 2022, a micro­grid com­mu­ni­ty in Flori­da kept the lights on even as mil­lions of homes lost pow­er dur­ing Hur­ri­cane Ian.

The Fruit­vale loca­tion was cho­sen out of a pool of self-nom­i­nat­ed blocks by the UC Berke­ley Research team, PG&E, and the City of Oak­land based on vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, lev­els of pol­lu­tion, and the block’s posi­tion on the city’s elec­tri­cal grid.

Daniel Hamil­ton, the Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and Resilience Direc­tor for the city of Oak­land, says that choos­ing a less wealthy area of Oak­land was a pri­or­i­ty. “There’s huge poten­tial to help the front­line com­mu­ni­ties that are already suf­fer­ing the effects of cli­mate change and have few­er resources to do the work,” he says.

Also crit­i­cal to the suc­cess of the project, say Hamil­ton and researchers, are the inter­est and col­lab­o­ra­tion of res­i­dents. In 2019, with the sup­port of Peo­ple Pow­er Solar Coop­er­a­tive, neigh­bor­hoods in Oak­land were invit­ed to apply to be the EcoBlock. “The Fruit­vale site was the one where the com­mu­ni­ty was most orga­nized and already most sup­port­ive” but still vul­ner­a­ble to cli­mate impacts, says Hamilton.

Com­mu­ni­ty liai­son Cathy Leonard, a long-time Oak­land native, says that the Oak­land EcoBlock serves as a micro­cosm for the rest of the city. Res­i­dents range in age from 1 to 80 years old, speak four dif­fer­ent lan­guages, and are of “all dif­fer­ent races and eth­nic­i­ties for a tru­ly diverse block.” For the project, Leonard has orga­nized block par­ties and infor­ma­tion ses­sions for the Fruit­vale neighbors.

“In order for soci­ety to real­ly address cli­mate change,” says Leonard, “we have to wor­ry about the homes that are already here.”

Since the project’s launch in 2015, the UC Berke­ley research team has had to over­come a series of hur­dles. The first site cho­sen failed due to neigh­bor­ly dis­agree­ments. Then, while work­ing on the Oak­land neigh­bor­hood, the nation­al cost of con­struc­tion sky­rock­et­ed. In 2020, the pan­dem­ic came, bring­ing with it infla­tion and sup­ply chain issues. Some parts of the EcoBlock, such as a res­i­den­tial charg­ing sta­tion for the neighborhood’s shared elec­tric vehi­cle, are a first for the city of Oak­land and a stream­lined per­mit­ting process has not yet been estab­lished. Oth­er reg­u­la­tions, such as state-wide build­ing codes, turn over reg­u­lar­ly before the project can begin construction.

Although per­mits have been applied for, the project is in lim­bo while they are being processed. “I think the com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers right­ful­ly expect­ed this to move much faster,” says Hamil­ton, not­ing the com­plex­i­ty behind EcoBlock, which has over a dozen part­ners and inter­sects with dif­fer­ent reg­u­la­to­ry bodies.

Among the red tape, the EcoBlock has had to con­tend with per­mit­ting and reg­u­la­tions by PG&E, which has a monop­oly on util­i­ty man­age­ment in the Bay Area. “I would say every step for­ward has been a bat­tle against the iner­tia of slow-mov­ing util­i­ties,” says Dr. Daniel Kam­men, the co-prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor for the EcoBlock.

Ener­gy researchers say that while micro­grids are a promis­ing solu­tion to an unre­li­able Unit­ed States ener­gy sys­tem, they are still uncom­mon. “Util­i­ties are in no rush to pro­mote clean ener­gy that’s dis­trib­uted, and not in their con­trol,” says Kam­men. ”Which cer­tain­ly might be an out­come of a world full of microgrids.”

Orig­i­nal­ly, the researchers envi­sioned giv­ing the res­i­dents a mas­ter meter, allow­ing them to “island” the block’s micro­grid from the city’s grid, for tru­ly self-man­aged solar ener­gy. “PG&E did not like that,” says Pef­fer. Instead, each home is now planned to be equipped with its own solar meter, that feeds into the city’s ener­gy sup­ply as well as the EcoBlock microgrid.

PG&E has two pro­grams for defray­ing the costs of micro­grids. The Com­mu­ni­ty Micro­grid Enable­ment Pro­gram pro­vides up to $3 mil­lion towards PG&E‑related costs of installing a micro­grid. A forth­com­ing Micro­grid Incen­tive Pro­gram has $200 mil­lion of fund­ing from the Cal­i­for­nia Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion and is antic­i­pat­ed to be launched joint­ly by PG&E and oth­er region­al util­i­ties across the state in ear­ly 2023.

Paul Doher­ty, a spokesper­son for PG&E, says that the EcoBlock is not eli­gi­ble for this sec­ond pro­gram as it is not, “‘vul­ner­a­ble to out­ages’ by our def­i­n­i­tion, not in a high fire-threat area, and not in our worst per­form­ing cir­cuits list.” Accord­ing to PG&E, out of the three dozen com­mu­ni­ties cur­rent­ly apply­ing for micro­grids, only one — The Red­wood Coast Air­port — has received fund­ing through their incen­tive programs.

With the help of the Tut­tle Law Group hired by the UC Berke­ley researchers, the EcoBlock res­i­dents have formed a demo­c­ra­t­ic com­mu­ni­ty asso­ci­a­tion through which they will co-own their micro­grid, which includes a solar-pow­er bat­tery stor­age system.