The Riverside Press-Enterprise
During earthquake blackout, Humboldt tribe kept operating with solar power
When a powerful earthquake jolted Humboldt County early Tuesday morning, tens of thousands of homes immediately lost power. Just as instantaneously, a mini-power grid of solar panels and batteries turned a nearby Native American reservation into an island of electricity in the sea of darkness.
The Blue Lake Rancheria served some 10,000 people over the daylong outage, by some estimates, becoming an emergency resource center for roughly 8% of the region’s population. The scene demonstrated how microgrids, though expensive investments, can preserve critical services during California natural disasters.
“Fortunately or unfortunately, we have tested these microgrids in real world situations,” said Jana Ganion, the tribe’s director of sustainability and government affairs. “We’re facing more emergencies even as we try to make our infrastructure more resilient.”
The magnitude 6.4 earthquake that occurred just after 2 a.m. left two dead and at least 12 injured, damaged bridges and shook homes off their foundations in the Rio Dell and Ferndale communities. Some 72,000 homes and businesses across the county lost power supplied by PG&E. Service was near fully restored Wednesday evening.
By using microgrids, two public places preserved power all of Tuesday and Wednesday following the quake: Redwood Coasthumboldt County Airport and Blue Lake Rancheria. Holiday travel went undisrupted and the local tribe’s facilities became a vital part of emergency response — again.
By 3:30 a.m. Tuesday, tribal police opened an emergency center in the reservation’s hotel and dozens of cars arrived to use Wifi after losing internet connectivity. A line started to form at the reservation’s gas station by sunrise, and people poured into casino restaurants. Many charged their devices at the community center and displaced people booked rooms at the hotel.
The operation unfolded much the same as in October 2019 when PG&E cut power to more than 2 million people across Northern California as a safety measure during a period of high wildfire risk. The tribe was credited with saving four lives with emergency medical equipment and even transformed a hotel conference room into a newsroom so the local paper could publish.
The Blue Lake Rancheria, a federally recognized tribe operating a 102-room hotel and casino, constructed two microgrids on its 100-acre reservation beginning in 2017. Much of the $6.5 million for both projects came from a California Energy Commission program meant to invest in clean-energy technology and bolster the state’s electricity sector.
Microgrids are a complex of solar panels, storage batteries and distribution lines that operate as part of the larger utility network when the electricity is on, and even contribute power to the main grid in many cases. But during blackouts, they disconnect from the system and use solar-generated energy stored in batteries to operate independently.
The Energy Commission has helped build 43 clean energy microgrids around the state, mainly in rural communities vulnerable to shutoffs and as a backup for universities or critical infrastructure such as wastewater treatment plants. According to some estimates, there are roughly 200 privately owned and fossil fuel powered microgrids in California.
Most recently, $31 million in state funds were granted this year to deploy 60 megawatt hours of long duration energy storage for the Viejas Tribe of Kumeyaay Indians outside San Diego. The facility will supply power that can be sent back to the grid during heat waves, such as the one that hit in September, to help avoid power shutoffs.
Mike Gravely, research program manager at the Energy Commission, said state-sponsored microgrids are meant to both support a business — in Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe’s case, the hotel casino — and the community during blackouts. Yet every home and business in the state should not go looking for a self-sufficient energy system, he said.
Too many microgrid users could not only undermine the utility-operated grid that the vast majority of state energy customers depend on, but also deepen California’s divisions between haves and have-nots as affluent communities and big businesses install their own systems.
“Climate change is happening faster than we can modify the grid,” Gravely said, adding that transmission upgrades are expensive and take years. “So until we get more permanent solutions installed, going forward we’ll see these things get more popular.”
Mark Schaeffer has had a front-row seat to his community’s reliance on Blue Lake Rancheria during power shut-offs. His small solar and battery storage business, Haven Electronic, is just down the road from the reservation. He’s glad the microgrid is there.
“The line outside their gas station goes on for a mile,” he said.
“Everybody in the northern part of Humboldt County knows that they have batteries and big solar arrays, so when the grid goes down they’re fully functional. People go eat, gamble, maybe watch music ... people love to spend money when they can’t do anything else.”