Earlier this month PG&E Vice President Aaron Johnson told a town hall that Pacific Gas and Electric Company was looking at ways to break Paradise and Magalia away from Feather River Canyon as it relates to public safety power shut-offs in order to lessen the scope of the shut-offs.
In that meeting, Johnson spoke of some work that PG&E had planned to install to help with that.
“We’re installing what is called a pre-connected interconnection hub,” he said. “It’s a place where we can put in a generator free of the event and some of the underground lines there can keep it operational just like we can portions of Skyway with the transmission coming in.”
PG&E announced on Tuesday that it has started building that hub in Magalia. Once that is in place, the company can island Magalia from a broader outage. The company notes that islanding refers to the ability of a microgrid to disconnect from the larger power grid — when the power is turned off during a broader grid outage, the area supported by the microgrid may remain energized and operate autonomously.
“It’s a start, but I really like this idea of being able to break those parts up that way,” he said. “In Magalia, we tap into that underground line, put in a generator there. And then what we have there is what we call a microgrid operating there during an event because we have no lines that are getting power.”
The company says that the site in Magalia was selected through an extensive process involving the analysis of prior and expected future shut-offs, along with overall feasibility and other utility work in the region that could reduce shut-off impacts.
The site is at 14049 Lakeridge Circle and includes PG&E customers in the Skyway and Lakeridge Circle loop and north on Skyway up to approximately Drexel Drive that is served by underground power lines to be safely energized during a power shut-off.
“Our specific objective with the development of temporary microgrids is to provide electricity to resources such as medical facilities and pharmacies, police and fire stations, gas stations, banks, markets and other shared community services when weather conditions make it unsafe to operate the grid,” Debbie Powell, vice president, Asset and Risk Management, Community Wildfire Safety Program, PG&E said in a press release.
Once completed, when conditions allow, PG&E says it will
be able to rapidly connect mobile generators to the site, allowing the fire
station, sheriff’s substation, post office, water district facility, a gas
station, markets, church, drug store and restaurants among other community
services to remain energized during future shut-offs impacting the area.
