Seattle City Light Energy Innovation and Resources Officer Emeka Anywanwu led a tour with the governor Thursday

Capitol Hill’s Miller Community Center is not solar powered but its $3.3 million microgrid installation including storage batteries and 132 solar panels on its rooftop produce enough energy to power the 19th Ave E Seattle Parks facility and gymnasium through a major emergency.

Thursday, Gov. Jay Inslee and Mayor Bruce Harrell were on hand for a pre-Earth Day ceremony to celebrate the project installed during the pandemic but not yet fully celebrated by the community.

Calling the project the “beginning of a revolution,” Inslee celebrated “free photons from the sun” and said there will soon be “hundreds” of projects like the Miller microgrid on community centers across the state.
“Where there is a rooftop in the state of Washington, there is potential free energy,” Inslee said. “It is our job now to make sure we maximize those rooftops.

During speeches outside the community center Thursday, Mayor Harrell called the microgrid the “perfect intersection of our values” that will “keep rates low,” and Seattle’s grid safe while using “cutting edge technology.”

CHS reported here in 2019 on the plans for the pilot solar project amid efforts to help Seattle be more resilient to natural disasters that disrupt its power grid.

The Miller microgrid works by capturing solar energy with photovoltaic panels and then storing the energy in a battery system on site. Officials say the microgrid’s battery storage system has a total capacity of 200kW / 800kWh to provide at least 16 hours of backup power for 100% of the loads at Miller Community Center (70kW) when fully charged. Seattle City Light expects the batteries to provide at least 24 hours of power during an outage. “Additional power can be captured as the panels will continue generating energy when the sun is up,” the city says.

Design and construction of the microgrid and installation of the battery system began in 202. The project has been funded by a $1.8 million investment from Seattle City Light and a $1.5 million Clean Energy fund grant from the Washington State Department of Commerce.

Improvements included upgrades to more efficient lighting in the community center.

The project also included a new interior art piece installed through a partnership with the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture and City Light’s 1% for Art Fund. Artist Julia Harrison’s work “combines and celebrates solar energy and community,” Seattle City Light says, and includes imagery of sports, flowers, and children at play.

“We are all children of the sun,” Inslee, who briefly campaigned for president on a platform focused on the environment and climate change, said Thursday, adding that the microgrids can be the start of addressing the “ravages of climate change” in the state.

Seattle’s 2022 Earth Day includes a visit from President Joe Biden who was slated to speak here on the environment and climate change Friday morning at Seward Park in Harrell’s home neighborhood before jetting back to the East Coast.

With E Madison tore up thanks to the federally boosted bus rapid transit project, Seattle’s most obvious Earth Day focal point was not unavailable. Opened at 15th and Madison in 2013, the Bullitt Center is considered one of the greenest commercial projects in the world.

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