Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) intends to award up to $43 million in Microgrid Incentive Program (MIP) grant funding for the development of nine new community-driven microgrids throughout its Northern and Central California service area.
PG&E has also opened the application window for the second wave of MIP grant funding beginning April 3. To apply for the second application window, interested parties are requested to submit MIP project ideas to PG&E by May 30, 2025.
The Microgrid Incentive Program funds the development of community microgrids to support disadvantaged communities most vulnerable to outages.
PG&E received approximately 50 inquiries from tribal governments, local governments and community-based organizations since launching its MIP in late 2023. 22 of the roughly 50 project inquiries advanced through initial program screening requirements and technical consultations with PG&E to submit applications.
Each of the 22 projects received an application development grant of $25,000 to offset community investments in developing successful project applications. PG&E selected nine projects after an evaluation and scoring process.
PG&E's project scoring framework examined customer and community attributes, resilience benefits, and environmental benefits along with the requested incentive amounts to determine the projects with the highest benefit-to-cost ratio.
The nine selected wave one MIP projects will perform due diligence to: review the terms of their award; reconfirm their project assumptions, including any changes to projected development costs; and reassess risks associated with other funding sources they may have assumed to be available.
Upwards of $43 million will be awarded to the nine projects, of which approximately $34 million will be for front of the meter generating resources (such as solar) and batteries, engineering and project management costs, and property purchase or lease costs. Each of the nine projects will also be allocated up to an additional $1 million to cover interconnection costs for the distributed energy resources to power the microgrids.
The microgrids selected in the first wave of MIP funding are located throughout PG&E's North Bay and North Coast region and include four projects in Humboldt County, three projects in Lake County, and two projects in Marin County. Four of the nine projects will serve tribal communities.
The microgrids will serve as new energy resilience solutions in the event of broader electric grid outages for a total of nearly 9,000 customers including approximately 3,600 customers with Access and Functional Needs (including people with disabilities, older adults, children, limited English proficiency, and transportation disadvantaged). The wave one awardees will receive between approximately $1-6 million each, based on requested incentive amounts and following the results of PG&E's project application scoring.
Generation resource types for selected MIP projects include clean energy solutions like solar, battery energy storage, pumped hydroelectric storage, small hydroelectric, and biomass.
