Tribes Seek Energy Control Using Tiny Power Grids Backed by US

The power regularly cuts out on the 500-member Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, throwing the reservation’s casino, community center, and homes into the dark.

The outages can be weekly during cold winters on the Hopi Reservation in northern Arizona, where many of the 9,300 residents still lack access to the grid even though an electric transmission line runs overhead.

Those tribes are now seeking Energy Department help to build their own clean energy generation, using tiny local grids that can improve access to electricity—and, in the process, harness control of their own resources.

“Our goals are to build resilience and exercise sovereignty by owning and operating our own power sources, and energy projects that create revenue so that we don’t have to rely on outside entities to control these things,” said Fletcher Wilkinson, energy manager for the Hopi Utilities Corp.

Opportunities and Challenges

Microgrid projects powered by renewable energy touch on several goals of the Biden administration’s energy policy: improved outreach to rural and remote communities, better relationships with tribal nations, and a more resilient power grid in the face of climate-driven extreme weather.

Yet, tribes find they still confront barriers to accessing federal funding and tax incentives established by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act enacted in 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act enacted in 2022. And questions loom over how to deploy a nascent technology that changes the flow of power on the electric grid managed by regulated utilities.

“I do see real opportunities to use less energy, use your own energy, and have a lot of federal support for that,” said Pilar Thomas, a partner at Quarles & Brady LLP who advises tribes on renewable energy project development.

Thomas, a former top official in DOE’s Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs, said the department was asking too much of communities by requiring a two-step application process—concept papers followed by a full application.

Only two or three tribes applied for the agency’s $1 billion Rural and Remote Communities program launched this year, Thomas estimated, far fewer than other similar federal programs.

“They made it more difficult than it had to be,” Thomas said. “It’s going to slow down deployment, and, in the end, probably not be as effective as it maybe could’ve been.”

Improving Resiliency

The push for microgrids comes amid talk of grid expansion nationally to connect large-scale wind and solar projects.

But in rural and remote areas in much of the country, it may not make sense to build a long-distance power line to serve a relatively small number of customers.

Microgrids are envisioned to provide locally generated power and lessen the impacts of a grid-wide power outages in both rural and urban areas. The department’s research efforts aim for microgrids, by 2035, to be “essential building blocks of the future electricity delivery system to support resilience, decarbonization, and affordability.”

For the Hopi Utilities Corp., microgrids offer a chance at loosening reliance on the broader grid and generating economic development and job creation. Founded in 2017, the corporation hopes to begin serving electric customers starting in 2026.

The corporation won a $3.6 million DOE grant in May for a small solar-and-battery microgrid to power some remote groundwater wells. It has applied for around $10 million from the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations for a larger microgrid project.

Ultimately, it wants to build a substation to tap into a long-range transmission line that cuts through the reservation. It would start with 40 megawatts of solar but plan up to 500 megawatts of solar, enough to not only supply local homes but sell to cities in the Southwest.

It’s confronting major budget shortfalls after the 2019 closure of the Navajo Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant, which supported more than 85% of the tribe’s operating budget in the form of coal mining royalties. Many of the grant programs require a 20% cost match—cash the tribe doesn’t have, Wilkinson said.

“I’m not a grant writer by trade, and it’s definitely not in my job description. But, you know, someone has to do it,” Wilkinson said.

Working With Utilities

The Iowa Tribe, whose reservation covers about 12,000 acres straddling Kansas and Nebraska, is looking to establish a tribal utility authority being supported through DOE’s Communities LEAP program. That initiative provides technical assistance to 24 local communities and tribes to pursue local energy goals.

The reservation’s “isolation leads to a lack of local services and is a barrier to economic development on the reservation,” according to the DOE’s project summary.

“There’s a lot of rural communities out there that all have energy resiliency issues, a lot of them are looking at how to become energy sovereign,” and David Tam, a microgrid expert and CEO of Grey Snow Management Solutions, an Iowa Tribe subsidiary tasked with economic development.

Electric utilities and tribes pursuing microgrids “don’t always see eye to eye,” Tam said. Some utilities may look at a locally owned microgrid as an opportunity to buy excess renewable power. But “if you want to essentially be energy sovereign and control your own power grid, well, the utilities lost a large customer.”

The electric cooperative serving the area hasn’t yet met with tribal leaders to discuss the microgrid project, said Michael Volker, general manager of the Doniphan and Brown-Atchison Electric Cooperatives.

Volker said he worries about a microgrid project potentially shifting the cooperative’s grid maintenance costs to consumers who aren’t benefiting from the project, but he emphasized he’s keeping an open mind. He added the cooperative hasn’t noticed power reliability issues on their system and was surprised to hear about them recently.

“We are 100% in favor of modernizing the grid and utilizing microgrids where the technology can be beneficial to members,” Volker said.

“There is the fear that this results in cost-shifting,” he said. “But I also want to work with them to alleviate those concerns as opposed to being against it.”

Local Feedback

The DOE has acknowledged concerns from local and tribal governments across the country and continues to adjust the application process and connect more with local communities.

The agency is taking lessons learned from the Communities LEAP program and applying it across programs established by the infrastructure and climate laws, said Christine Knapp, program manager for community innovation and technical assistance in the DOE’s Office of State and Community Energy Programs.

“LEAP is what can happen when you become fully aware of what communities need and are able to break down silos to provide support and expertise across a variety of technology areas,” Knapp said.

The department has heard about the desire to provide funding in addition to technical assistance and to ensure everyone is on the same page throughout the project, said Knapp, formerly the director of Philadelphia’s sustainability office.

“We need to continue to allow time for communities to coalesce around their goals and where they want to go,” Knapp said.