Magalia microgrid set be online by next month, PG&E says
Earlier this month PG&E Vice President Aaron Johnson told a town hall that Pacific Gas and Electric Company was looking at ways to break Paradise and Magalia away from Feather River Canyon as it relates to public safety power shut- offs in order to lessen the scope of the shut- offs.
In that meeting, Johnson spoke of some work that PG&E had planned to install to help with that.
“We’re installing what is called a pre- connected interconnection hub,” he said. “It’s a place where we can put in a generator free of the event and some of the underground lines there can keep it operational just like we can portions of Skyway with the transmission coming in.”
PG& E announced on Tuesday that it has started building that hub in Magalia. Once that is in place, the company can island Magalia from a broader outage. The company notes that islanding refers to the ability of a microgrid to disconnect from the larger power grid — when the power is turned off during a broader grid outage, the area supported by the microgrid may remain energized and operate autonomously.
“It’s a start, but I really like this idea of being able to break those parts up that way,” he said. “In Magalia, we tap into that underground line, put in a generator there. And then what we have there is what we call a microgrid operating there during an event because we have no lines that are getting power.”
The company says that the site in Magalia was selected through an extensive process involving the analysis of prior and expected future shutoffs, along with overall feasibility and other utility work in the region that could reduce shut-off impacts.
The site is at 14049 Lakeridge Circle and includes PG&E customers in the Skyway and Lakeridge Circle loop and north on Skyway up to approximately Drexel Drive that is served by underground power lines to be safely energized during a power shut- off.
“Our specific objective with the development of temporary microgrids is to provide electricity to resources such as medical facilities and pharmacies, police and fire stations, gas stations, banks, markets and other shared community services when weather conditions make it unsafe to operate the grid,” Debbie Powell, vice president, Asset and Risk Management, Community Wildfire Safety Program, PG&E said in a press release.
Once completed, when conditions allow, PG&E says it will be able to rapidly connect mobile generators to the site, allowing the fire station, sheriff’s substation, post office, water district facility, a gas station, markets, church, drug store and restaurants among other community services to remain energized during future shut-offs impacting the area.
While performing this work during the COVID-19 pandemic, crews will maintain proper social distancing recommendations and wear protective equipment when necessary to help safeguard the health and safety of themselves and the general public.
PG&E customers in the vicinity of the construction site will receive an automated, courtesy phone call from PG&E notifying them of the work taking place, the company said in the release. Customers who are within the temporary microgrid energization zone will receive a separate communication from PG&E, notifying them of their inclusion in the microgrid and informing them of how it will operate during a PSPS event.
In addition to deploying temporary microgrids, which are primarily designed to keep shared community services energized, PG&E says it is working on a number of improvements to make its power shut-offs less impactful for customers, including:
• Sectionalizing and reconfiguration: Installing more than 600 additional sectionalizing devices this year capable of re-directing power and limiting the size of outages. PG&E also analyzed its grid configuration to ensure as few customers as possible are impacted by future power shut-off events.
• Substation microgrids: PG&E’s substation microgrid solution is intended to reduce the impact of transmission-level power shut-offs, which is when PG&E must turn off power to higher-voltage transmission lines for safety. Transmission-level shutoffs generally impact a larger number of customers — some in areas that are not directly experiencing the severe weather conditions. Sixty existing substations are can use mobile generators when needed to help keep power on for safe-to-energize customers nearby. PG&E identified these substations as having a higher likelihood of having the utility shut the power off based on historical weather data and past shut-offs.
• Community Resource Centers: Providing customers impacted by power shutoffs events with a climatecontrolled environment and a space to charge electronic devices and receive refreshments.