April 2023

East Bay Community Energy authorized its CEO in December to execute power purchase agreements with Sunwealth and Gridscape Solutions to develop and build solar systems with energy storage at four member cities – San Leandro, Berkeley, Hayward and Fremont. Work has already started, according to J.P. Ross, vice president of local development, electrification and Innovation.

EBCE secured $2 million in the earmarked FY 2023 Federal spending bill passed on December 23 2022.  This money will support procurement of the solar and energy storage systems in four cities. Funding came from the Community Project Funding process, with the help of U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, and U.S. representatives Ro Khanna (D-CA 17), and Eric Swalwell (D-CA 15).

This work is identified as Phase 1 of EBCE’s Resilient Critical Municipal Facilities Program. Work has already begun on Phase 2 according to EBCE. Another four cities, Emeryville, Livermore, Oakland and Pleasanton have already received permission from their city councils to participate in the Phase 2 procurement. They are now in the process of compiling a portfolio of facilities to include in the program.

The four cities, all members of EBCE, together identified 30 facilities, which will support 3.1 MW of solar photovoltaics and 6.2 MWh of battery storage. Ross said EBCE spent two years, starting in 2019, documenting the sites’ energy use with the help of independent engineering consultant ARUP to analyze the data. The goal is to reduce or remove project risks.

The energy systems will be installed, for example, on municipal buildings in Hayward and Fremont to support fire, safety and emergency operations in 13 facilities when grid outages occur. The cities will be able to eliminate diesel generators which provided emergency power during outages along with the resulting air pollution. Power will also be sold year-round to the local utilities. Ross said he expects overall energy use in the buildings to go down 70% to 80% once the microgrids are operating.

EBCE and the attorneys from the four cities developed a standardized power purchase agreement which EBCE could sign with both the cities and the selected contractors. It is designed to reduce transaction costs, expedite procurement and minimize ownership risk for EBCE. Called a “sleeve” this allows EBCE to buy the energy from the developer, Gridscape, at each site. Sunwealth will own the projects.

The PPA will have minimal budget impact on EBCE, it said in its staff report to its Board of Directors. EBCE is acting as a pass-through entity for city-signed PPAs, which will pay back project development costs over time while recovering EBCE’s Phase I development and administrative costs

The independent consultants, ARUP and EcoMotion also worked with EBCE to develop a Request for Offers with enough details to allow developers to respond with specificity to provide a firm PPA price without visiting the sites. The RFO was released in August 2022 and EBCE received three bids. It selected the development team of Fremont-based Gridscaope Solutions as the developer and Connecticut-based Sunwealth LLC as the asset owners.

Under a separate consulting agreement Gridspace will submit interconnection applications to Pacific Gas & Electric. The Phase 1 projects will fall under Net Energy Metering 2.0 since the applications were submitted by March 15.  Future projects to be included in Phase 2 will fall under NEM 3.0 interconnection agreements. EBCE recognizes that NEM 3.0 agreements will negatively impact already designed budgets.