Committee Spotlight

Onsite Energy Systems at Critical Facilities for Resiliency Planning

U.S. Department of Energy State Energy Program Technology Action Group

Across the United States, critical facilities must maintain connection to electricity to provide services required for community safety. Advances in renewable energy and storage technology offer increasingly cost-effective options to improve the efficiency, resilience, and reliability of onsite energy systems for critical facilities during power outages. The Minnesota State Energy Office worked with the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Lab to:

Prioritize Statewide Critical Facilities and Select One Facility for Energy Analysis
Identify Resilient Energy Solution for Facilities
Develop a spatial inventory of facility locations and identify highest-priority facilities for energy resilience investments
Work with stakeholders to select one high-priority facility in each state for in-depth onsite energy system analysis.
Identify a cost-optimal onsite energy system to increase resilience.

The Emergency Preparedness Committee and MNGeo contributed accurate data for many critical infrastructure sites (fire, law enforcement, schools, healthcare facilities and multiple utility layers) to add value and accuracy to this study that would otherwise rely on national datasets. Without the support of local statewide data resources, Minnesota may have missed out on this DoE opportunity to fund resilience improvement of one high priority system - and the development of a tool to analyze, prioritize, and identify opportunities to improve resilience of many more systems.

An interactive web map was designed for the Minnesota Department of Commerce to explore about 14,000 critical facilities across Minnesota. Facilities were prioritized to help state decision makers develop on-site energy projects at facilities most important for community resilience and in areas considered vulnerable or historically underserved. Each was scored according to the importance of the services they provide, then clustered into hubs according to proximity where community members can access important, diverse services.