Picture a dry, windy afternoon in Pescadero, a farm town of about 700 people tucked into the hills above California’s San Mateo coast. PG&E cuts the power on purpose, before a spark from its lines can ignite a wildfire. The walk-in coolers at the farm stands go quiet. A parent picks the kids up early from a school that just closed. This keeps happening here, and in dozens of towns like it, which is exactly the problem new PG&E community microgrids are meant to fix.
PG&E just announced a second round of funding: $30 million split across six new projects in Humboldt, Sonoma, San Mateo, Butte, Placer, and El Dorado counties. Combined with nine projects funded in 2025, PG&E has now committed more than $73 million to 15 community microgrids built to keep power flowing in the towns that lose it most.
PG&E Community Microgrids Built for the Whole Town, Not Just the Fire Station
Most backup power plans protect a handful of buildings: the hospital, the fire station, maybe city hall. Pescadero’s $20.5 million project, led by WestLight Energy, aims higher. It will pair about 1.5 megawatts of solar with 2 megawatts of battery storage, enough to keep nearly the whole town running during an outage.
Irma Rodriguez Mitton has pushed for this for years. She runs Arriba South Coast, a group that organizes Pescadero’s mostly Latino farmworker community.
“We knew we could solve the problem, but we needed really strong, community-minded technical partners.”
PG&E is putting in $3.5 million directly, plus up to $4 million more for grid upgrades, alongside funding from San Mateo County.
What This Actually Saves Families and Small Businesses
A day without power costs a small farm stand hundreds of dollars in spoiled produce and lost sales. It means a parent missing a shift because the daycare closed early. It means an older adult on a home medical device weighing whether to evacuate to a hotel, at $150 a night, just to stay safe.
A backup generator runs $600 to $3,000 up front, plus fuel every time the wind picks up. A microgrid built into the town’s own wires means skipping that cost, plus the exhaust fumes and noise of a driveway full of running generators. It’s the same math behind Illinois’ battery storage deal, projected to save homes up to $2,800 a year: clean backup power simply costs less than the fossil fuel version.
- 15 community microgrids funded across two rounds so far
- $73 million total committed by PG&E
- 9,000+ residents covered once the first nine projects are complete
- About 3,600 of them are older adults, live with a disability, or face language barriers during emergencies
- 24 hours minimum of independent operation required for every project
The Honest Timeline
Pescadero’s microgrid won’t break ground until 2029, and won’t power the town until 2031. This is infrastructure, not a light switch. But the alternative is towns fending for themselves every fire season, the same problem Roanoke, Virginia is solving with solar battery microgrids at its schools.
Dave Canny, who leads PG&E’s North Coast Region, put it simply: “Community microgrids empower communities to take an active role in building local resilience.” Microgrid Knowledge’s coverage of the first round found similar numbers: thousands of customers who count on caregivers, medical equipment, or transportation help just to get through an outage.
What to Watch Next
If you live in a wildfire-prone part of Northern or Central California, ask your county emergency office whether a project like this is already in the works. The towns that get in early are the ones that stop losing power for good.