Green Tip: Resilience Through a Diverse Energy Supply

The Palisadian-Post has partnered with locally founded environmental organization Resilient Palisades to deliver a weekly “green tip” to our readers.

The recent shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline following a cyberattack underscores the critical importance of a diverse energy supply. The fact that a single pipeline was the sole source of gas and jet fuel to the eastern U.S.—the southeast in particular—is something few Americans had focused on. That is, until the oil stopped flowing.

In an era of severe weather, natural disasters and cyberattacks, it’s becoming increasingly important to diversify our energy supply. Californians are particularly at risk—summer heat waves are triggering rolling blackouts as aging power lines fail to keep up with soaring energy demands.

This means not relying on a single pipeline. It also means not relying on a single source of energy, like fossil fuels.

Recognizing the need to diversify, the city of Los Angeles, through LADWP, has set a long-range goal of expanding its reliance on a mix of clean energy sources, such as wind turbines and solar farms, as part of an initiative to get to 100% renewable energy power system by 2045.

Increasingly, Palisadians are turning to rooftop solar as a means of creating local clean energy and diversifying their own energy supply. According to a survey conducted by Resilient Palisades, 27% of respondents already have solar panels. Resilient Palisades is hoping to build on Palisadians’ interest in solar energy by launching the Pali Microgrid, which will provide participating homeowners and businesses with a reliable source of clean power and reduce the chance of a communitywide outage by alleviating demand on the LADWP grid.

In the coming months, Resilient Palisades will be issuing Requests for Proposals to vendors of solar panels, battery storage and control systems, with the aim of negotiating attractive group pricing that we will bring to the community in the fall.

For more information on the Pali Microgrid and to see responses to frequently asked questions, check out the Clean Energy Resilience Team page on Resilient Palisades’ website, at https://www.resilientpalisades.org/pali-microgrid