Santa Barbara City College
A pair of solar-plus-storage advanced microgrids will reduce energy costs and enable Santa Barbara City College to serve as a designated Community Resilience Hub during emergencies.
Advanced microgrids at SBCC’s East and West Campus will combine carport-mounted solar panels and battery storage with intelligent control systems to deliver multiple benefits:
Resilience: The battery systems will provide zero-emission backup power, enabling SBCC to serve as a resilience hub for the local community during power outages.
Cost Savings: On-site solar generates electricity cheaper than the grid, and battery storage shifts the timing of demand on the grid to minimize time-of-use and demand charges.
Sustainability: Zero-emission solar generation reduces the campus’s emissions footprint, and the microgrid will support the installation of new level-2 electric vehicle (EV) chargers.
Big Picture Impact
The SBCC Microgrids
The battery storage capacity of the two microgrids will establish the campus as a designated Community Resilience Hub, giving local residents a place with power, cooling, and other essential services during blackouts and natural disasters. This resilience is especially valuable because Santa Barbara County’s grid is particularly vulnerable to disruptions, as it relies on a single power line crossing 40 miles of terrain prone to wildfires, earthquakes, and landslides.
The project is being supported by a $4.2 million grant from the California Energy Commission (CEC) as part of its Community Energy Reliability and Resilience Investment (CERRI) program.
* The capacity numbers listed here represent the combined total of the two microgrids
1,320 kW
Carport Solar PV
8,016 kWh
Battery Storage
22
Level-2 EV Chargers
