Klickitat Valley Health wins FEMA-funded microgrid design grant; proposes hospital–school resiliency hub

Klickitat Valley Health presented a FEMA-funded microgrid design project to the Goldendale City Council on Dec. 2, outlining a plan to tie the hospital and the nearby school district together with solar, battery storage and backup generation so both facilities can remain operational during extended outages.

Jonathan Lewis, representing Klickitat Valley Health, said the design-phase award has moved the project forward and that the team hopes to begin construction by roughly one year from now. He described the system as “about a megawatt of solar, 2 megawatts of battery capacity with 8 megawatt hours of storage” and said the project has secured Tesla Megapack batteries.

Lewis told the council the project is fully funded. “The project is a 100% funded. We got 12,000,000 from FEMA, 10,000,000 from FEMA, and then Washington Emergency Management match, put in, like, 1,530,000,” he said; the transcript lists these three figures as Lewis stated them. He added the project also received a Washington State Climate Commitment Act grant of about $1,540,000. Lewis and staff said they will set aside a portion of anticipated electric-bill savings—Lewis estimated roughly $80,000 to $90,000 annually—as a maintenance and replacement reserve and to cover eventual decommissioning costs.

Council members and staff pressed the presenters on siting, zoning and safety. Lewis said some solar carports will require a conditional-use permit because the school district property is zoned residential; he also described necessary easements for high-voltage lines crossing campus and listed routine permit and engineering steps the city and the project team would need to coordinate. On safety, Lewis offered to provide third‑party fire‑safety analyses and Tesla training materials for first responders, and said the project team is planning community information sessions and emergency‑planning workshops to explain how the system would function in outages.

City staff indicated the municipality can partner on grant applications and serve as a pass-through where required. Lewis also raised improvements tied to the project—such as front‑parking modifications and ADA access at the hospital—that could be included in planning grant applications the city can apply for with the hospital as a partner.

Next steps described at the meeting include sharing technical safety reports with the fire chief and first responders, beginning conditional‑use/permit review for solar carports, and scheduling community meetings to explain system performance and emergency roles. The project team said it hopes construction could begin in about a year, subject to permitting and final engineering.