Resiliency is an increasingly hot topic in design. We have seen firsthand the impact extreme weather can have on communities, leaving prolonged damage to critical transportation and utility infrastructure, including washed-out roads, contaminated water, and power outages.
Designing for resiliency anticipates extreme weather and builds capacity to sustain critical services. For instance, incorporating a secondary electrical power source can be essential during prolonged utility power grid outages, ensuring continuity of vital operations.
Communities like the City of Duluth, a longtime LHB client and home to many of our employees, are taking steps to reduce the risks associated with such damage. Interest in resiliency has grown among city officials, and in 2022, the city applied for and received a $1 million Department of Energy grant to develop a resilience planning process that Duluth, as well as other communities, could use to meet community needs during power grid disruptions.
The program’s primary goal, says Brett Crecelius, a community resilience project coordinator with the City of Duluth, is to zero in on a process that allows communities across the Midwest to develop and implement a resiliency plan in just six to 12 months. (Currently, he notes, the process can take three or more years.)
Leveraging LHB’s knowledge of solar and battery storage
Known as ‘Form Follows Function (F3): A Framework for Community-based Energy Resilience Planning in the Midwest,’ Duluth’s project focuses specifically on how solar panels and battery storage can boost resilience in cold-climate communities. In the first phase of the project, the city identified 32 municipal properties that might serve as sites to apply this solar and solar-plus-storage strategy. A selection matrix developed by the city narrowed that list to 10 properties.
Last summer, the city retained LHB’s engineering team to assess the viability of installing solar panels and batteries on each of the 10 sites. Not every location is a good candidate for the installation of solar panels. A structure’s capacity to support the additional weight of solar panels and supporting frame (racking) materials needs to be assessed. Often, this information is not readily available and requires the assistance of a structural engineer to properly evaluate suitability.
LHB engineers assessed the viability of installing solar and battery storage at each of the 10 sites and recommended moving forward with five of the properties. The sites for future development included:
- A fire hall. Installing solar on the site would offset existing electricity usage and provide power to a piece of critical emergency infrastructure.
- A mixed-use facility. In addition to a library and community center, the structure houses fire and police operations. The site is being evaluated as a resiliency hub with both solar and battery storage to mitigate prolonged electrical utility power outages.
- A community center. The building’s pitched metal roof seemed like a perfect perch for solar. On-site battery storage is also possible, adding a second resiliency hub during extended electrical grid outages.
- A capped reservoir. Installing solar over the concrete lid of this below-grade water storage facility could ultimately produce 1 megawatt of power, but the initial build-out will generate a smaller amount of energy directly offsetting power consumption at the site.
- A city utility maintenance facility. A new rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) system at this facility will operate with net metering to lower the facility’s electrical power costs. The ballasted roof installer confirmed a solar PV system would not void the roof system warranty.
Getting things off the ground
LHB’s involvement with the city on the Form Follows Function (F3) project is ongoing, but our work to date has resulted in several insights that will significantly assist the city and other municipalities as they seek to develop a process for implementing solar and storage plans.
Our experience with small-scale to utility-scale solar PV systems affirms there is no one-size-fits-all approach.
That said, there are several pre-screening tools that can help communities assess the viability of sites more rapidly. For instance, for structures with a flat roof system consisting of a rubber membrane and secured by rock ballast, partially removing the rock ballast may generate structural capacity to install solar equipment without extensive structural analysis or modifications.
Ultimately, the city hopes to install solar panels capable of generating 750 kilowatts of power on the targeted sites, Crecelius says. But the real value may come from the process yielded by the research: If successful, Duluth’s experiment will help other communities build resiliency in ways that are better, faster, and economically sustainable. ∎
Curious if solar and battery storage is a good fit for your design project? Reach out to Bob Lisi at Bob.Lisi@LHBcorp.com.
