Oregon

Senior Community Center in Oregon

A county government which is leading the nation in strategizing for community resilience engaged muGrid to assess resilience feasibility at several critical community sites in the county. With support from muGrid Analytics and a state-level organization in Oregon, the county has made strides in assessing potential hazards and risks to energy reliability and allocating resources to facilities designated as emergency response centers or community resilience hubs.

This senior center is designated as an emergency shelter in the event of extreme weather or climate events. This means that during the next earthquake, the center’s serviceshed (or total population serviced by the facility), which currently encompasses seniors living in the region, will need to rapidly expand to accommodate the entire community. 

muGrid assisted in assessing several design strategies for developing a resilient microgrid – encompassing 79 kW of rooftop and carport solar, a battery storage system of up to 180 kWh, and backup diesel generation. We assumed that during a hazard event this resilient power system would be the extent of the energy capacity available to the site and gave a robust estimate of the resilience that the system would provide during a grid outage, including the benefits of load shedding, or shutting down unneeded appliances and systems.

We also supplied the Center with investment-grade financial estimates of the assessed energy systems for their higher-level planning and discussions with funders.