A rural coal town chooses to prepare current and future energy workers for new opportunities through active participation in the Tenino Innovation and Education through Renewables (TIER) Project: microgrid, grid-interactive buildings, community.
Project Start Date
03/01/2017
Project Description
The rural Washington town of Tenino, like many communities in the Centralia region, has been affected by the decline of the traditional logging and agricultural economy and the impending closure of the Centralia coal plant in 2025. When the state’s last coal plant closes within the next seven years, 200 local jobs will disappear. Already, nearly a third of the town’s 700 households report income under $25,000. Facing this inevitable change, Tenino is chose to prepare current and future energy workers for new opportunities through active participation in the Tenino Innovation and Education through Renewables (TIER) Project. Community Energy Lab's core team led the TIER initiative (under the umbrella of non-profit PECI) in conjunction with the community. Project partners contributing cash and in-kind match are wide ranging and diverse including: regional public and investor owned utilities, Washington State University, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the Pacific Northwest Center of Excellence for Clean Energy, Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF), and more than fifty additional community stakeholders, advisors, and experts working in the fields of energy, education, research, vocational training, and local politics. Spring and summer 2018 were spent developing detailed project timelines, budgets, and branding with feedback from the core group and opportunities for public comment. In June of 2019, the project was recognized by the Smart Electric Power Association as Visionary of the Year for the community energy advising model and work with TIER and its partners. The TIER program in Tenino comprised three key and interconnected elements: 1 Grid: A grid modernization demonstration project that allows students and trades to learn about modern, flexible, smart grid infrastructure and technologies. PECI (now the Community Energy Labs team) assisted the TIER team in assembling a coalition, drafting a project plan and securing funding from Puget Sound Energy and the Washington Department of Commerce for the novel community/utility-owned microgrid now in planning near the Bluemaer substation behind Tenino High School. Read more here: https://www.pse.com/pages/grid-modernization/tenino-microgrid 2 Curriculum: A K-12 educational and vocational curriculum designed to teach regional youth about renewable energy and prepare for post-secondary programs like those at Centralia College. TIER collaborators, in partnership with regional utilities, worked with Bonneville Environmental Foundation to develop and test a hands-on grid modernization curriculum. That program has been implemented in more than 30 K-12 school districts throughout the region since 2018. Ken Simeone from the Tenino School District began teaching the units in his classes in 2019. Read more here: https://southsoundbiz.com/tenino-launches-project-to-modernize-power-grid-create-jobs/ 3 Community: An innovative and essential tool, The Local Energy Exchange Platform (LEEP) was conceived as a means to prepare and educate families and community members on how to live comfortably in a new energy landscape that increasingly depends on low-emission, intermittent renewable energy generation. LEEP was the inspiration and starting point for Community Energy Labs. How LEEP Became CEL In 2018, PECI’s Board of Directors determined that its policy and technology efforts should be divided to allow the non-profit to focus solely on Oregon’s climate policy. The balance of technical work in Washington, California and other communities would be spun off into an agile social enterprise. Throughout 2019, PECI and Community Energy Labs clarified and negotiated the legal transfer of the intellectual property, partnerships, and agreements for all grid edge technology projects, products and partnerships—including LEEP—to CEL. Read more here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/peci-transfers-grid-edge-assets-cel-tanya-barham/ Simultaneously, the LEEP consortium undertook extensive market research, technical roadmapping, early prototyping, user testing, policy analysis and nearly 100 interviews of utilities, communities, school districts and energy service providers. Our work revealed a critical gap in the deployment of building energy technologies. Buildings are responsible for almost 40% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. COVID-related changes notwithstanding, carbon emissions from the US residential building sector are expected to decrease by 12.3% from 2016 to 2050, while total emissions for the commercial sector expect to increase by 0.9% when accounting for population growth, climate-related weather impacts, and increases in energy efficiency and distributed generation. Despite increasing pressure through regulations such as the Washington Clean Buildings bill (HB1257, 2019) and voluntary measures to clean up their buildings’ carbon emissions, small- to mid-sized commercial customers struggle to comply. These small to mid sized commercial buildings make up more than half of the US commercial floor space, and in particular municipal, schools and college campuses (which make up 28% overall) have shrinking budgets, minimal building analytics or automation, and lean facilities staff to comply with increasingly stringent building energy requirements. In the same way that Apple revolutionized personalized computing, through innovative business models and clever user-centric design, our consortium discovered a means of making clean building optimization affordable and accessible for these underserved building owners. CEL was born.
Location
Washington, United States
Zipcode
98589
Equity Categories
Disadvantaged Community Low Income Community
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City of Tenino, WA Tenino School District Centralia Community College Bonneville Environmental Foundation Washington Department of Commerce Washington State University Pacific Northwest National Lab PECI
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