“It’s about independence,” said Jason Cozart, who’s one of 1,200 tribe members and assistant general manager of Soboba Casino Resort.
Cozart, who grew up on the 7,000-acre reservation, remembers pretty frequent power outages. “And power was out for a while,” he said. “We weren’t necessarily the priority on getting things back up and running.”
That’s why they recently finished construction on their own gas station, the Road Runner Express. And it’s why they’re pursuing this microgrid project. Soboba isn’t ditching those generators entirely, in case true emergencies arise. But once the microgrid is in place, they’ll be able to use solar power for outages when the sun is shining and backup battery power for when it’s not. Gomez projects they’ll have enough stored juice to run the casino for four to eight hours.
Soboba started talking with Scale Microgrids back in early 2021. So last summer, when Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the teams had a shovel-ready proposal that helped them land several grants to cover roughly half of the total project cost, which they declined to share. They’re also looking to add the casino’s first charging stations for electric vehicles and do more electrification projects. And this could be just the start.
Some other tribes, such as the Pechanga Band of Indians in Pechanga, have even developed their own full-fledged. But for tribes that haven’t yet ventured down that path, Gomez said there’s understandably some skepticism when an outside company like his approaches.
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