Case Studies

Mt. Hood Town Hall is a community gathering place in the Upper Hood River Valley. It acts as a recycling center, community meals distribution hub, middle-school classroom, a venue for special public events, and a relief center during emergencies. Originally built in 1914 and owned by Hood River County, the facility is a registered historic building.

Due to its geography, Hood River County faces unique outage-inducing events including wildfires, ice storms, earthquakes, high temperatures, and high winds. Much attention was drawn to this in 2018, when the Hood River County Energy Plan was adopted, making energy resilience a top priority.

Fast forward to September 2023: With a specific site for a microgrid in mind and a list of resiliency goals in hand, Hood River County received a grant from the Oregon Department of Energy’s Community Renewable Energy Grant Program to fully fund a microgrid feasibility study for the proposed project.

The Oregon Military Department (OMD) wanted to bolster the resiliency of its Col. James W. Nesmith Readiness Center. The facility already had a 255 kW PV array and a 150 kW diesel generator, but in the event of an earthquake or long-duration grid power outage, the PV system would be inoperable, leaving just the generator’s 1,000-gallon tank. OMD wanted an energy storage system (ESS) to optimize the existing on-site assets and boost its backup power capacity to 14 days, as well as provide a blueprint for installations at other facilities.

Retrofitting a long-duration ESS to a grid-tied PV system at a facility this size that also includes a generator was a considerable challenge. The installer, Sunlight Solar, contacted Mayfield Renewables in 2018, and asked us to conduct the feasibility study and take on the design.

In September 2022, Cleanleaf Energy (formerly Borrego) approached Mayfield Renewables with a repower project at Antelope Valley High School in Southern California. Originally installed in 2011, one of the system’s two 500 kW central inverters had failed, cutting production in half. With 15+ years remaining on the power purchase agreement (PPA), the array wasn’t making any money. It was time for some serious upgrades.