Samish Island community microgrid

In 2023, PSE installed a community microgrid on Samish Island. The microgrid consists of a 50 kW / 332 kWh battery and an 8kW ground-mount solar photovoltaic (PV) array in a residential neighborhood with a high occurrence of customer-owned rooftop solar.
Over the next ten years, we’ll test the system’s ability to form a microgrid and provide back-up power during an outage. This is known as islanding. We’ll also test the benefits of pairing a battery with solar to manage the integration of excess solar electricity back-fed to the grid. Additionally, PSE will evaluate other functions like peak shaving, which eases strain on the grid during times of high demand. The results from the testing of this project will inform future battery and microgrid projects developed by PSE.