Allocation And Storage 6MWh! Scale Microgrids Deploys Microgrid Project For California Indian Community

Microgrid developer Scale Microgrids Solutions has said it will build a solar-plus-storage microgrid project for an Indian tribe in California, announcing the project a few weeks after securing $225 million in debt financing. deployment plan.

The company will install and build a 1.5MW rooftop solar system and a 6MWh energy storage microgrid for a resort in Soboba Band, home of the Indian tribe in Riverside County, California.

Tribal communities have historically suffered from higher service costs, higher grid connection fees, more outages or brownouts, and remote service locations, Scale said.

Guillermo Gomez, Business Development Manager at Scale, said: “The impact of the Soboba microgrid project goes beyond power delivery and cost savings. It ensures long-term energy sovereignty for local communities and will incentivize more public and private sector development of distributed grids on tribal lands. energy."

The project is very similar in scope to a project that industry media reported on a few months ago that was also deployed in a Native American community in California. The 60MWh energy storage project for the Viejas Indian tribe uses energy storage technology from long-duration energy storage (LDES) system providers Invinity and Eos Energy Enterprises.

In an interview about the project, Viejas tribal chief John Christman said the project would eventually take the community off the grid.

The resort is the economic lifeline of many Native American communities, and to ensure this microgrid project provides critical services during grid power outages. Scale will provide 24/7 on-site and remote monitoring of the project.

The Soboba Tribal Council said: "This project is in line with our mission of strengthening tribal sovereignty, self-sufficiency and prosperity. We have a responsibility to help our people thrive in this land and believe this microgrid system is a step towards achieving our goals an important step."

The Scale development team received more than half of the project cost funding from California's Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) and direct payments from the Investment Tax Credit (ITC). Direct payments mean getting a cash payment instead of getting the Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which reduces project developer taxes and fees and is required to get tax equity financing.

The direct payment tax credit was introduced by the Inflation Cutting Act specifically to allow non-tax-paying entities to benefit from the clean energy credit, so it only applies to them. The law firm Arnold & Porter claims that these entities include tax-exempt organizations, states, Indian tribes, Alaska Native corporations, rural electric cooperatives and the Tennessee Valley Authority, among others.

Some in the industry speculate that this means such entities will eventually become the largest owners of renewable energy assets in the United States.

Just a few weeks ago, Scale announced it had secured $225 million in debt financing arranged by KeyBanc Capital Markets and City National Bank. The company is owned by global private equity investor Warburg Pincus.