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Local agencies would get needed guidance on the best places to site clean, stand-alone microgrids under a bill that's gaining traction. Passing out of the Senate Energy Utilities & Communication Committee on a 12-0 vote April 19, SB 99 by Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa) also comes with money for the microgrids and emphasizes their siting in overburdened poor communities.

The legislation is in response to wildfire-driven power shutoffs and the subsequent run on polluting diesel backup systems.

“Power outages in recent years have cost California billions, and the emissions from backup generators pose a huge threat to our environment,” Dodd said. His legislation prioritizes the development of alternate power sources to help keep the lights on.

Last year and the year before, the state budget allocated $50 million and $75 million, respectively, for power resiliency grants to city, tribal, county and state governments. The grants, administered by the Office of Emergency Services , largely funded diesel backup installations to power emergency and safety agencies and community centers, undermining the state’s decarbonization efforts, clean energy advocates warned.

Leveraging Energy Commission funding

SB 99 enhances energy resilience, “with local, clean energy infrastructure rather than diesel, leveraging the investments that California ratepayers and taxpayers have already invested at the California Energy Commission,” Kurt Johnson, the Climate Center Director for Community Energy Resilience, said. Sponsored by the center, SB 99 directs the Energy Commission to fund and provide a tool kit that would be a primer on clean, distributed generation for currently ill-equipped local agency staff.

The staff would work with utility companies to identify the best locations for solar and battery-powered community microgrids. The collaboration also is supposed to lead to accelerated distributed resource permits, including for electric vehicle chargers.

A community choice aggregator, which typically services multiple cities, as well as other regional entities, may also apply for funding on behalf of local governments.

The installed microgrids could both provide power to communities when their electricity is cut off and when there is high demand on the grid, to alleviate stress on the system, Dodd noted.

The funding in SB 99 would come from state budget appropriations.

Microgrid plus line undergrounding bill faces cost concerns

The Senate energy committee also heard another measure that addresses microgrids, but which also focuses on undergrounding electrical lines in high fire threat areas to help curb power shutoffs. SB 533 by Sen. Henry Stern (D-Los Angeles), passed on a 9-3 vote, but faced considerable opposition.

The bill requires utilities to ensure their infrastructure is safe and reliable. That includes by installing clean microgrids to supply power during outages, undergrounding wires and taking additional system hardening action in regions that have suffered a number of utility safety shutoffs in a year.

The Mayor of Moorpark complained of “deadly” shutoffs in her city, including ones just last December and January that lasted up to 40 hours. “We need to mitigate public safety shutoffs and need to act now,” Mayor Janice Parvin said.

Southern California Edison, which shut off that city, said the bill and its proposed microgrids and system upgrades were unnecessary and overly expensive. The utility’s ongoing hardening work and the California Public Utilities Commission requirements negate the need for the bill, Adam Smith, SCE state legislative affairs senior manager, asserted.

Also passed by the committee on Monday were SB 437 and SB 756

SB 437 by Sen. Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont) requires publicly owned utilities to include in their integrated resource updates their plans for transportation electrification, both for light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. Passed on a 11-3 vote, it would include a cost calculator for customers to estimate their fuel costs.

SB 756 by Sen. Ben Hueso (D-San Diego) makes more households eligible for weatherization assistance. People with incomes up to 250% of the federal poverty line, rather than only 200%, would become eligible for new windows, insulation, and other energy savings retrofits. For a family of four, the annual income cap would rise from $50,000 to $60,000.

Dolores Huerta, a long-time immigrant farmworker activist, urged passage of the measure, citing the need for energy efficiency education to help low income families, who have lost employment income during the pandemic.

Hueso’s bill seeks to make the most of federal funds expected to come California’s way by providing information about weatherization, associated energy savings and bill reductions to many more eligible people.