The project will help the Yurok, Hoopa and Karuk tribes avoid frequent power outages by generating their own renewable energy.
Heidi Moore-Guynup of the Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe said the tribe lives along one of Pacific Gas & Electric’s most unreliable power lines.
“They’re often without power,” she said. “It could be because of a tree branch. It could be because of the extreme heat. It could be because of planned or unplanned power outages. It could be because of an earthquake here on the coast.”
The Blue Lake Rancheria is helping develop the microgrid, including by installing two demonstration systems at their new government building and their resilience campus currently under construction. They already have two other microgrids that Moore-Guynup said serve as a model for others across the state.
The microgrids will use solar panels and batteries and will be interconnected, meaning electricity can be diverted to different areas where it is needed. Three different systems will be installed for each tribe.
Linnea Jackson, director of the Hoopa Valley Tribe Public Utilities District, said this project will bring a number of benefits to the tribes, including workforce development.
“We need to be able to sustain this for the next 10 to 20 years and beyond,” Jackson said. “We need to grow this workforce. We need to provide tribal training for electricians and all the other workers that are necessary.”
The goal is to be able to cover current electricity needs for at least 24 hours in the event of a power outage, Jackson said.
The tribes are receiving $88 million from the Department of Energy to complete the project. Jackson said the tribes would need to raise another $88 million to reach that amount. But that’s still half the cost of other resilience-enhancing measures, such as burying power lines underground, Jackson said.
They are working with the Schatz Energy Research Center at Cal Poly Humboldt to develop this system. Jackson said they hope to have the microgrid online by 2029.
