How a Microgrid Transformed a California Senior Center into a Resiliency Hub

From wildfires to earthquakes, heat waves and floods, California is no stranger to climate-related natural disasters. In Lake County, about 100 miles northwest of Sacramento, a new microgrid is powering a resiliency hub that helps the surrounding community weather those storms. 

Located at the Lucerne Alpine Senior Center in Lucerne, CA, the off-grid microgrid provides up to 72 hours of uninterrupted power, even during extreme weather or grid disruptions. 

The senior center is in a 95-year-old former elementary school building on the shores of Clear Lake, California’s largest freshwater lake. The center’s four employees and a group of dedicated volunteers provide lunches, operate a food pantry and host activities for the community’s seniors. 

The center also partners with the American Red Cross during emergencies, opening its doors to the broader community as a heating or cooling center during grid outages. 

It was this relationship with the Red Cross that first set Lucerne Alpine Senior Center on the path to becoming a resiliency hub, according to Charles Behne, who serves as the center’s chairman of the board. 

The board wanted to create a place where evacuees from the region’s increasingly devastating wildfires could come and stay overnight, Behne explained in an interview with Microgrid Knowledge, but that would require a reliable source of power that was not subject to grid outages. 

Read the full article here.

• Client :

  Red Cross

• Date :

  25/Jan/2025

• Budget :

  $212,650

• Category :

  Microgrid Design

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