Oregon Funds $12 Million in Resilience, Renewables and Microgrids to Power Wells, Schools and Tribes

In Oregon, wildfires are increasingly sparking power outages and public safety power shutoffs (PSPS).

To help meet this and other challenges, the Oregon Department of Energy has awarded $12 million in funding to help provide renewable energy and resilience through microgrids, solar and storage.

While the Trump administration is rolling back clean energy and resilience funding, states like Oregon are stepping up with new programs or continuing existing programs. Two new Oregon laws aim to advance microgrids by creating resiliency corridors and boosting community powers.

Community clean energy grant program was established in 2021

The $12 million in projects was funded through the Community Renewable Energy Grant Program established in 2021.

Under the program, a $63,811 grant went to the Oakridge School District to support planning for solar and energy storage to provide resilience. That includes a potential solar and biomass combined heat and power system at three area schools and a Parent Resource Center.

Like many Oregon towns, Oakridge is struggling to maintain resilience in response to wildfires and PSPS.

In 2019, the local utility, Lane Electric Cooperative, shut off power in Oakridge for five days due to wildfires, said Sarah Altemus-Pope, executive director of South Willamette Solutions, a nonprofit group focused on wildfire risk that helped the Oakridge School District obtain the grant.

2022 devastating Oregon fire demonstrates the need for resilience

In 2022, Lane Electric shut off power for two days in Oakridge at the same time officials were calling for an evacuation in response to the Cedar Creek Fire, which burned more than 127,000 acres.

“It was horrible timing,” she said. “Power was shut off as people were getting text messages to evacuate.”

The county alert system was shut down, so the state fire marshall sent dozens of firefighters to knock on doors, telling people to evacuate.

The need to shelter in place during emergencies

During wildfires, community members sometimes have to shelter in place. “A resilience hub makes sense and having backup power is really important,”  Altemus-Pope said. Schools often serve as shelters and host fire command teams.

The grant to the Oakridge School District will look at how the large amounts of biomass created from post-fire restoration work and efforts to reduce fire risk could be used in boilers to create a combined heat and power system, she said.

Resilience is also important to Pendleton, Oregon, which received a $1 million grant to pay for a 500-kW battery for the town’s aquifer storage facility, helping the town sell power to the local utility and keep pump wells running, said Kyle Willman, assistant public works director. It will also help ensure the city can fight fires during outages.

The storage facility, which was created as an alternative to above-ground water tanks, pumps water out of a river, cleans it up to drinking water standards and stores it underground, he said. The city now stores over 1 million gallons underground.

“When we put water back in the ground, we pump backwards,” Willman said. “An innovative employee found a way to capture the power from the pump spinning backwards, and it goes back to the grid and we get credits from the utility, Pacific Power.”

Tribe receives $1 million for solar and storage

A third grant, for $1 million, went to Warm Springs Power and Water Enterprises (WSPWE) and Warm Springs Housing Authority (WSHA) to bring solar and battery energy storage systems to three locations on the Warm Springs Reservation, according to a press release from the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. The grant supports the Tribes’ focus on energy sovereignty, equity, affordability and resilience.

The Warm Springs solar and battery systems will be installed at:

• Park Place Court Permanent Supportive Housing. This includes 10 tiny homes and a community services center for previously unhoused Tribal members;
• Twenty-four single-family homes in the West Hills Affordable Housing neighborhood; and
• Greeley Heights Community Center, an accessible gathering space for the Tribes’ low-income community.

Other awards included:

• A $100,000 grant to plan a solar and storage microgrid for a new transit hub for Coos County Area Transportation District.
• A $1 million grant to the Umpqua Indian Utility Cooperative to deploy 4 MW of solar across five sites to provide electricity for the Cow Creek Band of the Umpqua Indians, which is expected to spark about  $706 in savings per year per Tribal member household.
• A $100,000 grant to the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians to plan a tribal-wide resilience project at the Three Rivers Health Center using a PV solar and battery energy storage system.

Even though federal funding for microgrids and renewables is disappearing, microgrid seekers–especially municipalities and schools– haven’t given up. They’re looking to programs like Oregon’s to provide critical energy resilience.