Jamestown NY Municipal Utility Building Downtown Microgrid with Federal, Local Funding

Oct. 24, 2023
The Jamestown Board of Public Utilities announced the $17.3 million funding through a U.S. Department of Energy Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIPs) program. The utility board will match the project funding with $5.79 million.

A southwestern New York city, once known as an industrial and manufacturing hub, is embracing the energy future with the help of a $17.37 million federal grant to build a downtown microgrid.

The Jamestown Board of Public Utilities announced it received the money through the U.S. Department of Energy Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIPs) program. DOE announced last week that the GRIPS funding, coming via the 2021 Infrastructure Act, would total about $3.5 billion in this latest release and was being allocated to hundreds of microgrid, renewable energy and grid resiliency projects across 44 states.

Jamestown is located in southern Chautauqua County, New York. The city of nearly 30,000 residents was known in the last century for making products such as the crescent wrench, the automatic lever voting machine and also as the “Furniture Capital of the World.”

The GRIPS funding will aid the Board of Public Utilities in deploying a microgrid in downtown Jamestown. The distributed energy site also will include electric vehicle charging, battery storage and a replace of underground cabling, according to the report.

The utility board will match the project funding with $5.79 million of its own. 

“A microgrid in downtown Jamestown would allow for continued electrical service in a widespread electrical outage to vital public services,” reads the announcement by the Jamestown Board of Public Utilities. “Such services would include fire, police, hospital, utilities, designated emergency shelters, schools and other businesses. The microgrid would increase our utility’s reliability and resiliency, a great benefit to our customers.”

The microgrid will utilize the city utility’s existing gas-fired turbine, a district heating system and adding a battery storage system for “black start” capability. Black start is a process of restoring power to a part of the electric grid without connecting to the external electric transmission or distribution system.

“Not only will the microgrid support our city and enable life-saving energy to be accessed during the times it’s needed most, but it will be developed entirely by our local workforce,” Jamestown Mayor Eddie Sundquist said in the city press release. “Our people are our greatest asset and with the BPU’s commitment to hire 100% unionized labor, every dollar from this grant will remain within this community. We thank the Department of Energy, the Jamestown Board of Public Utilities and U.S. Senator Charles Schumer for their continued belief and tireless advocacy for this investment in Jamestown.”

Mission Critical is the Heart of Microgrid Development: Join us Next April for our Microgrid Conference 2024

Happening in Baltimore at the Famous Waterfront: Join the Revolution in Energy

The microgrid will serve operations during a prolonged outage to ensure power for mission critical entities such as the Jamestown police and fire departments, Municipal Public Works, Electric and Water Resources Division, Alstar EMS Ambulance Service, UPMC Chautauqua Hospital, the Urgent Care Medical Facility and several large community buildings which can serve as shelters, the board noted.

The Jamestown Board of Public Utilities estimated that the award negotiation process may take several months to complete before microgrid design and construction work begins. The project is on a five-year timeline, according to the release.

Track news from all phases of the microgrid project pipeline. Subscribe to the free Microgrid Knowledge Newsletter.

About the Author

Rod Walton, Managing Editor | Managing Editor

For Microgrid Knowledge editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].

I’ve spent the last 15 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. I was an energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World before moving to business-to-business media at PennWell Publishing, which later became Clarion Events, where I covered the electric power industry. I joined Endeavor Business Media in November 2021 to help launch EnergyTech, one of the company’s newest media brands. I joined Microgrid Knowledge in July 2023. 

I earned my Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. My career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World, all in Oklahoma . I have been married to Laura for the past 33-plus years and we have four children and one adorable granddaughter. We want the energy transition to make their lives better in the future. 

Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech are focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.

gettyimages1341067688_sdl__1320x755

Revolutionizing Defense: The Crucial Role of Microgrids and Schneider Electric in Department of Defense Energy Resiliency

Sept. 13, 2024
Last month, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) said that U.S. power grids are becoming more susceptible to cyberattacks every day, with vulnerable attack...

Schneider_Business

Microgrid Business Models and Value Chains

The new energy industry is working to categorize the various types of microgrids and business models. The primary goal is to minimize microgrid system cost and funding. To learn...