The Palisadian-Post has partnered with locally founded environmental organization Resilient Palisades to deliver a weekly “green tip” to readers.
Due to LADWP’s overloaded circuits, outages in the Palisades are on average three- to four-times greater than other areas of the city, according to a presentation by the agency in 2016. Blackouts aren’t just a pain. For some of our neighbors, blackouts risk their health and well-being.
If you’re tired of blackouts, it may be time to join the microgrid revolution. Microgrids are networks of connected homes and businesses with solar panels to produce electricity and batteries to store it. Each unit has a control system that tells it when it should store power, when it should give power back to the grid and when it’s time to share that power with neighbors.
Sharing power with neighbors has the potential to improve our resilience. Imagine thousands of Palisadian homes and businesses with solar panels and the ability to store tens of thousands of kilowatt hours of power. In the event of a blackout or natural disaster, a microgrid could keep the power on for all homeowners for an extended period of time. And in addition to resilience, microgrids reduce emissions and help save money on electric bills.
These are the reasons why Resilient Palisades is announcing an important new initiative: the Pali Microgrid.
The Pali Microgrid will follow a two-phase approach. The first phase consists of installing solar and storage islands at thousands of homes, businesses, schools and congregations throughout the Palisades.
The second phase consists of joining these islands into a community microgrid in close coordination with LADWP. If we’re successful, the Pali Microgrid will be one of the first of its kind in California and the country.
As a first step, we’re asking every Palisadian household and business to complete a survey that can be accessed from our home page, resilientpalisades.org. Please complete the survey to indicate your interest in participating in the Pali Microgrid, and tell your friends and neighbors to do the same. Our success depends on your input.
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