New Microgrid Provides Resilience to Washington’s Orcas Island Community

Already a gathering place for the community, the microgrid elevates the Center to the status of resiliency hub for the island’s approximately 6,000 full-time residents and the large number of tourists that visit the 57.3 square mile island each year.

“Knowing that [Orcas Center] now has the ability to keep operating during extended outages means we can integrate it fully into our emergency response planning. That’s a huge step forward for resilience on the island,” said Brendan Cowan, Emergency Manager for San Juan County.

“This project allows the center to continue being a place where the community comes together, whether it’s for a concert, a class, or in the middle of a crisis,” said Dimitri Stankevich, the outgoing executive director of the Orcas Center.

Stankevich helped define the microgrid’s direction, which he first envisioned as a small project that would grow over time.

Instead, the full installation was up and running in about just a few years.

The feasibility study and system design were completed in mid-2023, permitting and final engineering were finalized by the end of 2024, and construction began in the first quarter of 2025.

The microgrid, which was developed by Cascadia Renewables, commenced operations in October.

Doing hard things

“Dimitri came to us with a vision and a challenge: how do we turn the Orcas Center into a place that can keep the lights on for the community when it matters most. Together with the Center and our partners, we collaboratively defined what resilience meant for this community and then built a project to deliver it. This project shows that when we work together, we can do hard things,” said Markus Virta, managing partner at Cascadia Renewables.

One of Cascadia’s partners was Xendee, a microgrid software company that provides, among other things, modeling services to optimize the design of energy systems.

“On a complex project like this, knowing that your technical and economic projections are correct is huge. Xendee’s analysis gave everyone confidence that the system would deliver on its goals of resilience and reliability,” said Trent Maw, director of marketing at Xendee. “That confidence is what allows projects like this to move forward and inspire other communities.”

Another project funded by Washington state

“To see the Orcas Center now operating with a fully integrated solar, battery, and backup system, and to know it will serve the island for decades, is beyond what I imagined,” Stankevich said.

Funding for the Orcas microgrid was provided by the Washington State Department of Commerce through the Climate Commitment Act (CCA).

Enacted in May 2021, the CCA is a cap-and-invest program a market-based climate policy that limits (caps) total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from major sources—such as power plants, fuel distributors or industrial facilities—and requires those emitters to purchase allowances for every ton of CO₂ they release. The money raised from selling these allowances is then invested in clean energy, climate resilience and community benefit projects, such as the Orcas microgrid.

Washington state has funded a multitude of microgrids in recent years, including one at the Swinomish tribe’s senior center. Construction on that project began late last month.

While the size of the grant received by the Orcas Center was not published, the Washington State Department of Commerce announced it had awarded 71 recipients grants totaling $72.6 million in June 2024. Multiple microgrid projects were among the recipients. An additional $7.5 million was awarded in May 2024 for tribal clean energy projects, including microgrids.