GRID UNLOCK:

Longtime readers of this column will not be surprised to learn that the town in question is Gonzales, the California municipal version of the Little Engine That Could. Its small, working-class population of just 9,000, many of them farmworkers, has ingeniously solved tricky local government problems, from universal broadband to health care access, and from economic planning to child development.

Now Gonzales is tackling one of our state's most stubborn challenges: how to develop local sources of cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable power as our state's aging energy grid falters.

Tiny Gonzales's solution? Creating the largest multi-customer microgrid in California. In essence, Gonzales is building its own electricity island among the vegetable fields of the Central Coast to guarantee uninterrupted power, from mostly renewable sources, for the agricultural and industrial businesses that provide the tax base to support its ambitious local programs.

The idea of microgrids--local power grids that can be separate or connected to the larger grid--is not new. In California, they are seen as tools to make electricity service more resilient and to better integrate renewable energy sources, like solar and wind, with the power grid. But efforts to establish microgrids face complex obstacles, from scarce financing, to regulatory barriers that prevent utility customers from sharing power across different grids, to opposition from established utilities.

What distinguishes Gonzales is how the town is bringing together different entities--a savvy start-up applying advanced technology and financing power to microgrids, big energy customers in agriculture and food processing, a new municipal energy authority, and a method for selling power capacity back into the state grid--to surmount those obstacles.

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