Healthcare Microgrid Developer Starts Preliminary Work at Senior Living Facilities in California
One year after first announcing the projects, a newly formed microgrid developer is starting pre-construction work on two on-site senior healthcare sites in California.
Developer NextTNRG Inc. is commencing pre-construction activities for preparing microgrids at Sunnyside Nursing Center in Torrance and Topanga Terrace in Canoga Park. These will be NextNRG’s first company-owned and operated healthcare microgrids.
Both are solar and battery storage installations which deliver a combined 724 kW of rooftop PV and 1 MWh of energy battery discharge capacity. NextNRG will own and operate the systems selling the electricity back to the facilities under 28-year power purchase agreements.
"Moving these healthcare microgrids into pre-construction is another step in turning our long-term customer agreements into operating energy infrastructure," said Michael D. Farkas, founder and CEO of NextNRG, in a statement. "Healthcare facilities depend on uninterrupted power to protect lives, and regulators are increasingly requiring them to invest in backup capacity."
Pre-construction work includes site surveys, structural and electrical drawings, state and local permitting, equipment procurement and utility interconnection. So far, the company has not given a date for starting or completing construction of the senior center microgrids.
California Assembly Bill 2511 requires skilled nursing facilities to maintain at least 96 hours of backup power during an outage, and Florida has adopted a comparable standard for long-term care facilities. AB 2511 combined legislation on both senior center backup power and a separate recycling issue.
There is no federal law requiring backup generators or emergency power for assisted living nor senor living centers. States such as Florida, Virginia, Maryland and California require backup generation for senior care centers.
Many other states, including Oklahoma and Texas, have no such rules. Texas does require licensed assisted living centers to have climate-controlled “areas of refuge,” while Oklahoma only requires such centers to provide written disclosures to residents and caregivers that they have no backup power.
NextNRG first announced the Topanga and Sunnyside PPAs and project one year ago this month. The microgrid agreements came five months after Miami-based NextNRG was formed from the merger with mobile fueling firm EzFill Holdings.
Overall, the healthcare sector includes about 15,300 nursing homes and more than 32,000 assisted living facilities nationwide. Hospitals already maintain backup generators per federal law.
"The healthcare sector represents a massive market opportunity where our ownership model and technology create significant value," Farkas said during last year’s announcement. "These facilities cannot afford power interruptions, and our comprehensive smart microgrid solutions powered by machine learning provide the energy security they require while generating stable, long-term cash flows.”
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Rod Walton, Microgrid Knowledge Managing Editor
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I’ve spent the last 18 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 36-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.