Spokane MLK Community Center Microgrid

The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Community Center acts as a neighborhood resiliency center with the installation of a microgrid funded by the Solar plus Storage for Resilient Communities Grant together with Avista Corporation. The microgrid supports the resiliency of the year-round services offered by the MLK Community Center by allowing the center to serve as a community shelter during extreme weather and other non-weather-related emergencies. The new microgrid includes solar generation, battery storage, electric vehicle (EV) charging, and generator power. During normal operations, solar generation is utilized by the MLK Community Center and charges the battery energy storage system (BESS) with excess generation being delivered to the utility grid. In the event of an unplanned outage, the microgrid will be islanded, and the solar generation, battery storage, and generator will be dispatched to provide power necessary for the MLK Community Center to continue providing critical services for the community.

Coffman’s scope of the project included design services for the interconnection, layout, foundations, and barrier walls of the microgrid system components, excluding photovoltaic (PV), as well as provisions for the microgrid switchboard with utility tie-in, a generator, and a BESS isolation transformer.