Six PG&E Community Microgrids Selected for $30 Million Round

Six PG&E community microgrids were selected for a $30 million second funding round on September 17, 2026, expanding California’s Microgrid Incentive Program across six Northern and Central California counties.

The projects are expected to serve more than 2,200 customers and support schools, fire stations, health centers and other critical facilities. Individual awards range from $2 million to $6 million, according to the utility. The proposed systems use combinations of solar, battery storage, biomass and biodiesel.

The announcement is a selection milestone, not a construction or operating milestone. PG&E did not identify five of the six second-round projects by name or publish their individual capacities, award amounts, development schedules or islanding durations. Each project still faces engineering, interconnection, permitting, contracting and construction work.

PG&E community microgrids expand into six counties

The PG&E funding announcement places the projects in Humboldt, Sonoma, San Mateo, Butte, Placer and El Dorado counties. The utility said the second wave covers rural, coastal, Tribal and high-wildfire-risk communities, but its release did not provide a complete project-by-project list.

One identified award is the Pescadero project in San Mateo County, led by WestLight Energy. It is planned with approximately 1.5 MW of solar and a 2 MW battery to serve more than 200 customers for at least 24 hours during an outage. Microgrid Media previously reported the Pescadero funding milestone, so that project is context for the broader round rather than a newly discovered development.

The new selections bring PG&E’s first two announced funding waves to more than $73 million. The utility awarded $43 million to nine projects in its first round in 2025. The latest release does not mean all of that authorized funding has been disbursed or that every selected project has a final construction notice.

Lake County projects sign development agreements

PG&E also reported a separate milestone for several first-round projects: awardees have executed grant agreements that establish terms for engineering, design and development funding. Three proposed Lake County systems are pursuing a concept called Firemain Linked Auxiliary Supply/Hydraulic Energy Storage, or FLASHES.

The proposals would combine tens of megawatts of local solar generation with pumped hydro storage using subsurface water, elevated roofed tanks and turbines. The stored water could also support firefighting. The three planned service areas extend along the northwest shore of Clear Lake and into portions of Hidden Valley Lake.

Those projects remain at an early feasibility stage. PG&E said geotechnical core boring and initial test-well drilling are planned, while Lake County described the grant as funding needed to test environmental and financial feasibility. The announcement does not confirm final plant capacities, permits, financing, construction approval or an operating date.

The program targets multi-customer outage resilience

The California Public Utilities Commission authorized the statewide $200 million Microgrid Incentive Program in 2023 for disadvantaged, vulnerable and Tribal communities exposed to outages. Its allocations include $79.2 million for PG&E, $83.3 million for Southern California Edison and $17.5 million for San Diego Gas & Electric.

Eligible systems are front-of-the-meter, multi-customer microgrids. They require local generation, controls and switching equipment that can separate a defined area from the wider distribution grid and continue serving selected loads. That is a different operating model from a single-building backup generator or a battery that cannot island a local network.

Microgrid Media’s report on Duke Energy’s Trenton community microgrid shows the type of deployment milestone that comes later: an existing battery was integrated with switching and controls to provide islanded service for roughly 1,500 customers. PG&E’s new awardees have not yet reached that stage.

Project-specific disclosures are the next test

The strongest next evidence will be executed agreements for the remaining awardees, public identification of each project, site-specific capacity and duration data, interconnection approvals, permit decisions and construction notices. The program’s resilience value will also depend on which loads are prioritized and how long each microgrid can operate under realistic outage conditions.

The PG&E community microgrids now have a defined second-round funding pool and county footprint. The September 17 decision moves six projects into the program, but it does not establish that the systems are fully financed, construction-ready or guaranteed to reach operation.