Resilience Against Electrical Outages in Stockton, CA
Abstract
Stockton, California is one of the poorer cities in the United States with a poverty rate that is 4.7 percent higher than the U.S. average. Stockton also experiences issues with power outages due to extreme adverse weather events like winter storms and heatwaves. Cities such as Stockton are often neglected during these power outages despite needing the most support during these disasters due to their lack of resources. To help solve the issue of electrical outages, we propose installing a microgrid in the lowest-income area in Stockton. With the help of GRID alternatives, the microgrid would be capable of providing one of the poorer areas of the city with electricity for almost two days. The second solution is installing or upgrading insulation for 1,141 households in the city. Adding insulation reduces energy usage and thus energy bills, helping to prevent power outages from excess demand and mitigating the energy burden of low-income households. The cost of these solutions is estimated to be $55 million. In order to provide the funding for these solutions, we will apply for grants from federal services such as the US Department of Energy and more local services such as the State of California Energy Commission. We also plan to get donations from local businesses or corporations as well. By partnering with PG&E, we hope to access data that will allow us to monitor the grid closely. This would give us a sense of if our solutions are effective by using reliability measures as well as a reduction to billing charges for households with added insulation. In addition, we can see if Stockton is experiencing significantly fewer outages by measuring the planned and unplanned outages.
