A remote town in southwestern Colorado is looking for solutions as it faces power issues during winter storms. Officials in Silverton, a town in the San Juan Mountains, received what they called a "wake-up call" last winter. David Krause, Team Editor at The Colorado Sun, joined KUNC’s Nikole Robinson Carroll to talk about what happened next.
“They weathered half a dozen blizzards and six outages in a row,” Krause said of a rough winter in Silverton one year ago. “So what the town did is, they've created a comprehensive resiliency plan. And part of that is - really the centerpiece of it - is a microgrid, which is a combination of solar panels and a large battery, so they can provide backup power for the entire town.”
Silverton has partnered with the San Miguel Power Association on the project. The power association views community-size solar grids as a way for small mountain towns like Silverton to keep the lights on during storms.
“When the power goes down, it takes with it a lot of services, including at the grocery store for the cash registers, gas pumps—you get town services that have a hard time getting out,” Krause said. “Homes with gas furnaces also go cold.”
Krause told KUNC the power association hopes its work in Silverton and other mountain towns will serve as an example of how the microgrid model can work in communities across the country.
“There's really a lot of interest growing among rural communities that use these microgrids as power backup,” he said. “These ideas are getting help with a lot of federal and state money.”
In July, the U.S. Department of Energy announced almost $15 billion in funding to bring microgrids to underserved and Indigenous communities nationwide, and some of that money is already making its way into Colorado.
Get top headlines and KUNC reporting directly to your mailbox each week when you subscribe to In The NoCo.
“The state is getting involved,” Krause said. “They received $17 million from the feds.”
So far, eight grants have been awarded to microgrid projects in Colorado, including in Jefferson, Larimer and Pueblo Counties.
Correction: This story previously stated Colorado is using $7 million in federal funds to develop a microgrid roadmap. The vast majority of that $7 million will actually be distributed directly to utilities through the Grid Hardening for Small and Rural Communities and Advanced Grid Monitoring grants and a small portion of the funds will go toward the roadmap.
