Community Microgrid Assistance Partnership: Proposal Webinar - Transcript

Webinar Transcript

Sean Esterly: Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining us on today during Veterans Day. And just like to start off by thanking anyone that has served for your service. We are going to get started here with our webinar. And once this—yep, there we go.

All right, so yeah, thank you for joining us for our "Community Microgrid Assistance Partnership" overview webinar. This program, also known as C-MAP. And my name is Sean Esterly. Kicking things off here, I’m a project manager with NREL and helping to support the C-MAP program. 

A couple housekeeping items for you as we go to the next slide. So just some Zoom tips for you. If you’re having any trouble hearing anything, make sure you check your audio settings first. If you’re having any connectivity issues, you can always try a different browser. You can try quickly logging out and back in. 

Or feel free to send a chat to us, and we can try to walk you through how to fix that. You’ll notice at the bottom you have two options for interacting with us. There is a chat feature that’s going to be for any directions, like how to fix audio if you’re having issues, and any discussion. 

We do have a separate Q&A panel. And would ask that if you have any questions you’d like to submit to us, please use that Q&A panel. We’re going to be monitoring that very closely. And we’ll address those questions during the Q&A session. 

As you join, please feel free to enter your name, location, and organization into the chat. Love to hear who’s joining, where you’re joining from, and who you’re representing. Also, there is a full link for the request for proposals or RFPs on the C-MAP website. 

We will be dropping that link into the chat for everybody. So, you can click on that to access that page. We will also be copying all questions that do accidentally find their way into the chat, into the Q&A. 

So, we will release that with the recording as well, so you’ll be able to go back and see what questions were asked and how we responded to those. And so, with that, I will turn it over to Ian Baring-Gould, my colleague here, for the next few slides. 

Ian Baring-Gould: Great, thank you, everybody. Thank you so much for being here. I want to give a quick introduction to the program. Dan Ton was going to be able to do this but was called away. And so, I’m filling in for him. 

So, we’ll do a quick overview of the C-MAP effort, what we’re doing. We’ll dive into the program a little bit to give you an overview of the program. And then Sean will be back to dive a little bit more into the specific solicitation that’s on the street. 

And then Kyndall, at the end, will talk a little bit about the actual contracting, the application process, and some things to think about as you’re looking at pulling together a solicitation. So really quickly, for all of you, this will not be any new information. Isolated communities all over the United States but certainly in Alaska, Hawaii, the Southwest, Midwest, islands along the East Coast, anyplace where you’re not connected to the grid or are connected through a very tenuous grid, the energy costs are amazingly high. 

And so, part of the microgrids effort within the Department of Energy under the Office of Electricity is really to look at how we can improve microgrid systems, especially for islanded and remote communities. And that’s really the big focus of this larger C-MAP effort. Going to the next slide, please. And one of the things that C-MAP is really trying to get into, is trying to address, is that we’ve had very piecemeal deployment of microgrid technology over the years. 

There’s a number of systems that have been operating for—well, certainly, diesel power systems have been operating—microgrid diesel systems have been operating for the better part of 50 years in a lot of places. And there are a lot of innovations in regards to how diesel plants can operate. A lot of innovation has happened with putting renewables, energy storage, advanced controls on diesel plants to increase the efficiency. 

But the communication from community to community about how to do this effectively so that all of the communities can move forwards in this development process hasn’t really happened. And then you have programs, like in Alaska, where the Alaska Energy Authority and the state of Alaska has put a lot of effort into expanding knowledge within the Alaskan community on how to improve microgrid power systems. That doesn’t necessarily translate very well. And the communication doesn’t get out to places outside of Alaska. 

So, the whole C-MAP effort, this Community Microgrid Assistance Partnership, is really built around, how do we take the lessons that are being learned by the deployment of renewable technology, advanced diesel technology, advanced controls to be able to move all communities forward, not just the one that gets the grant? And so that’s a real focus of the efforts that we’re doing here. We’re talking about, in this case, contracts going out to communities to move that along. 

But a whole element of this is how do we bring other communities around this community of practice so that everybody can move forwards at a faster pace? Next slide. And really focusing on the goals of the Office of Electricity microgrid program, you can see, these are the key bullet points. So, promote microgrids as a core solution for isolated communities, you already know it is a core solution. 

But how do we improve resilience, reliability of that system? And then how can we take lessons from what all of you are doing and apply it, not only to other isolated communities in the United States, in the Arctic, around the world, but how do we take that learning and apply it to the grid system writ large, as we face climate change and climate disruption? Second bullet there is really working to decarbonize the electricity system. 

And so that is, how do we run our system more efficiently? And a lot of expertise within the microgrid and the islanded remote area on how you operate power systems more efficiently. So, how can we take that learning and apply it nationally? And then decreasing the cost. 

So, all of these things are core elements of the Office of Electricity program. And you can see how they reflect very cleanly into the work that we’re trying to do here, but the work in islanded and remote communities as well. Next slide. And so, I’m going to dive a little bit into this Community Microgrid Assistance Partnership. And again, it is a partnership. So, we have a number of different things that we’re going to be talking through, one of which is the solicitation that’s on the street right now. Next slide.

So, the partnership is what I—I mean, the name gives you an indication of what we’re trying to do. So, there are a lot of entities out here that are working to move forwards microgrid power systems. 

And microgrid power systems, if successful, have a strong impact in communities. That’s what everybody is trying to do. And so how do we pull these entities together into a real partnership, where we can expand communication and learning across all of them? 

And that’s really what the focus of the Office of Electricity is trying to do through this C-MAP activity. So, pulling all of these entities that are working in the space to show real outcomes in isolated and remote communities. Next slide.

And we really see this through these three strong pillars of activities. So, a partnership of organizations, and that’s the Department of Energy; national laboratories; state energy offices; academia in the areas of the country that we’re talking about—so academia, academic programs in Alaska, Hawaii; NGOs, so nongovernmental organizations that are already working in communities but have a lot of expertise; and Tribal energy, Tribal development. How do we pull all of these people together, all of these organizations together, each of which are doing a little bit of this, to have a cohesive element to support communities as they go forward?

The second part is this community solicitation, which is the focus of this talk right now. And that is providing money to communities to be able to do the development work that needs to happen to go from an idea, from a concept. We know we want to improve our microgrid. We have an understanding of how to do it. But then we need to get money to be able to do it? So, how do we bring communities together, providing them money to have communities look at how to solve this problem?

And then the third one is these wraparound services. So, how do we provide support to communities, as they go through this process? And some of this could be around, how do you write good proposals? Others are, how do you do power plant operation and maintenance? And these wraparound services are really trying to pull the information together and provide it to multiple communities so that they can move the development of microgrids forward. Next slide. 

So, this key focus of funding the communities is because communities need resources to be able to innovate. So, every community that I’ve been to, all are filled with amazingly smart people who have ideas of what they can do to make things work better, but they’re not resourced to be able to do it. And so, one of the key elements of this is to provide those resources to the community, in terms of financial resources, to move it forward so that you’re implementing and developing the solutions for your community but then also having the ability to tap into this whole other partner network to address questions that you might have and might not have clear solutions to. And so, this whole concept of a partnership, but being able to provide resources to communities to move their plan forwards, is really what we’re trying to do. Next slide. 

And so, through this funding effort, we’re really looking at providing awards to communities to implement activities around microgrid development. And so, Sean will get into these in a little bit more detail as we go forward. But as I said, we have four of them, two based on regional engagement. So multiple communities that are working on similar problems or want to work on similar problems but need resources to be able to do it. 

And so, the first one, topic area one, is around, how do we operate our power systems better? The second one is, how do we develop systems better so that if a couple of communities and a general region—and we’re not trying to be specific about what region means—want to develop similar projects, you all have solar energy, you all have wind energy, and you want to think about how do we do this as a group, as compared to each doing it by themselves? A little bit of funding to be able to do that. 

The second two—or the third and fourth—are really focused more on a single microgrid. So, a single community that wants to either improve their system, like design it, or come in to or improve the power system under development, or really do a large-scale transformation, do something a little bit more, not out of the box, but push their system a little bit more. And so, we’ve got these key principles here. 

As you look at implementing these, we want organizations that are there to support you. So, the universities, the NGOs, the national laboratories, if need be, they need to be competitive. But the goal is to have them simple so that they’re not a huge lift for communities to be able to engage around. 

We want specific community commitments with specific goals. Because the idea here is to help you move forward down the pathway and to use these resources to be able to do it. And then how what you’re doing in your community can translate into what other communities could be doing once they learn from your expertise. Next slide.

So, these are the types of recipients that we’re looking for as part of this. And you will see this if you go to the solicitation, you’ll see this through the scoring criteria that we use. But high impact—so we want this to be able to really move the ball forwards within your communities. Communities that have a lot of need to implement these projects—so demonstrating that by doing what you’re proposing to do, you’re going to be able to impact your community in a positive way. Good motivation—so again, we can provide the money to move things forward, but the inspiration and the motivation needs to come from the communities to be able to implement it. So, certainly looking for communities that have done some work in this area. And the ability to provide a little bit of funding to support what you’re doing going forward really moves you down that path. And then this need for continued support—so some level of technical support to be able to take the next steps is something that we’re going to be looking at. So, communities that fit into those areas are really what we’re looking for. 

Oh, sorry, I guess I should say that up here at the top, didn’t really cover that. But we want communities or entities that are overseeing power systems, so communities that are operating power systems or the utilities that are moving them forwards, so the local power companies, local utilities or independent energy suppliers. Community support organizations like Tribal governments can certainly apply for this If they provide services to the communities. Going to the next slide. 

The wraparound services are really designed to provide not only the communities that receive funding but all other communities that are looking at microgrids to be able to move the ball forwards. And so, again, we can’t fund everybody with resources, but we can certainly open the expertise that comes out of this work, open to all communities that are interested in going forward. And this includes communities that might not be far enough along to be able to actively engage with financial resources but are interested in looking at how to improve their microgrid. Want to be able to make sure that they can take part in this larger partnership structure so that they can be moving the ball down the road or the court as well. Next slide. 

And so, it really is this kind of a structure of organizations that are really going to support communities and community representatives, from the Department of Energy all the way on the left-hand side, the national laboratories to community-based organization, educational partners, and then the whole laboratory network to be able to implement this. So, although it’s being run out of NREL, it is in partnership with the other national laboratories to be able to bring the technology to communities. And then support community outreach and engagement, proposal development, and then as I’ve been talking about, the funding of this work going forward. 

Next question—or sorry, next slide. And so, our timeline for this project, for the solicitation effort, is engaging a little bit now. The C-MAP application is open. And the plan is that that will go through to the end of December right before the holidays. 

Though certainly, we would like to hear from you if the deadline of the 20th of December is a problem with communities, if that’s not long enough to be able to move those forward. No guarantee that we can extend the deadline. But again, we’re trying to make this so that it is respectful for all of you. And if we need more time to move it forwards, then we can certainly look at that. Projects announced in March. And then going through the contracting process. So, thinking about the April–May—or sorry, the May–June time frame for when the contracts are in place. And then the community support or the technical assistance to the projects will launch at about that time. Next slide. 

So, we certainly see a lot of benefits to communities that receive funding through this project, so stronger operations of the microgrids, improved capacity, funding, the development of funding-ready proposals. So, a lot of communities have ideas that they want to implement, but the ideas are not developed to the point where they can go out and seek funding, whether it’s private-sector or public-sector, to deploy the projects. So really trying to get more projects from your communities to a point where they are at a level of development to allow funding to be able to happen. Building relationships with other communities. And again, the real goal is to lower and stabilize energy costs for isolated communities. And then we see a bunch of nonenergy benefits as well. 

And going to the next slide, we certainly see through this community of partnership, that this effort goes beyond just the communities that have funding—that get funding through this project. So please don’t think about this as, if you don’t get money in this first round or you’re not ready to apply, that you’re out and out forever.

This is really designed as a process to bring in more communities. And even the communities that don’t receive funding during this first round, we hope to do multiple rounds as we go forward. And then certainly, to expand the learning so that what people find out going through this process—what we all find out going through this process—is shared equally around the globe, but certainly around Alaska, Hawaii, other Tribal power systems, Tribal communities, and remote power systems around the United States. Next slide. 

And so here, I’m going to turn it over to Sean to talk a little bit more specifically about the solicitation itself. Please, again—if you have questions as we go through here, be sure to drop them into the Q&A, and we’ll get to as many of them as we can. So, thank you all. 

Sean Esterly: Yeah, thanks, Ian. All right, so specifically on the C-MAP solicitation—and you can go to the next slide, please—there is—again, the link was sent out. You should be able to access it. If you have any trouble accessing that site, please drop a chat, email us, let us know. But that should be out there. You can go out there. 

And there’s a number of different attachments towards the bottom of that webpage that I’d recommend everyone interested in this opportunity read through. One is going to be the solicitation itself. Obviously, very important to read through that. 

But the other one I would recommend is the scope of work that is one of the attachments. And within that document, there’s a lot of details on the different topic areas. It goes into a little bit more detail than the solicitation itself. So would recommend taking some time, reading through that. Again, we’ll elaborate more on these topic areas that I’m going to talk about.

So, the technical focus of this solicitation is, again, community-based microgrid energy systems designed to operate independently of the grid or isolate for prolonged periods of time. There’s four topic areas under this. And really, you can split these into two broad levels. One is going to be regional microgrid communities, so multiple communities, larger systems. And within that, there—so three to five communities is what we’re targeting. 

Within that, there’s two areas of support. One is going to be for operations assistance. So, that is going to be intended to allow individual communities to complete detailed design and investment plans for either a new or a major retrofit of an existing microgrid power system. 

So, it is really looking to improve existing systems. Max award—or the award amounts for that, $200,000 base, $75,000 per community, with a maximum award of $650K. And we expect those periods of performance to be about 24 months. Within that regional focus—the three to five communities—we do also have a topic area two, which is going to be focused on the development of new microgrids. 

So, this topic area is intended to expand community-based microgrid development and planning, leading to the identification of regional approaches that are going to support the implementation of improved microgrids for—or in multiple communities. Funding levels for this, $300K plus a $50K per community, with a maximum award of $550K and similar timeline of 24 months. 

Now, topic areas three and four are for one specific community, so, not the three to five. This is shifting to just individual communities but similar focus areas. So, one topic area three is for microgrid development. And so, this is going to focus on new microgrids. It’s intended to allow individual communities to complete detailed engineering and investment design plans for that new or major retrofit of an existing microgrid power system—and helping to enable communities to obtain project funding. Maximum amount of award under this one is $300K, and expected period of performance is 22 months. 

And then topic area four is intended to allow individual communities to assess, design, and also implement microgrid improvement efforts to operational microgrids. Maximum funding here, $400K, and expected period of performance is 18 months. So, looking at, again, topic area one and topic area four, these are really aimed at improving the operation and maintenance of microgrids, either expanding capacity, for example, improving the operation of it, could be improving the controls. And then topic area two and three are really for the development of new or expanding existing microgrids. 

To be eligible for the solicitation, the microgrid, primarily designed to be grid-connected, is expected to operate independently of an external grid for long periods of time. And so, next slide.

OK, the eligibility. So, the map on the right is the eligible regions. And that is for this first-year effort under C-MAP. There is a potential that this could expand in the future. But for this year, in this round of funding, these are the eligible regions. 

Within these regions, eligible organizations are going to be nonprofit entities, including energy co-ops, state and local government entities, as well as any federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes and Villages, inclusive of any Alaska Native Village or Regional Corporation as defined or established pursuant to the Alaska Native Settlement Act. In addition to that, anyone applying must either be from or directly representing specific underserved and Indigenous communities in remote, rural, and islanded regions of Alaska, Hawaii, and Tribal lands in the West and Midwest. And by West and Midwest, we mean these blue highlighted states in the map. 

In addition to that, there is one other criteria for—to meet the rural eligibility, and that is must identify at least one area in the U.S. with a population of not more than 10,000—using the 2020 Census Bureau figures—that will benefit from the proposal. The identified area must either be a city, or town, or an incorporated municipality, or census-designated place, or similarly discrete and identifiable communities that is not located within an incorporated municipality. So, it could not be a community of less than 10,000 inside a urban center, for example.

And again, I would encourage you to go out to the website, read through the solicitation and that scope of work, which really goes into some more details on the eligibility, as well as the topic areas if you have any questions. Or use our Q&A here to ask those. And next slide. And so, I’ll turn it over to my colleague Kyndall Jackson for talking about the procurement and contracting. 

Kyndall Jackson: Thanks, Sean. My name is Kyndall Jackson, I’m a subcontract administrator here at NREL. And you will see my information in the RFP as well. My email is all there. You can go to the next slide. 

So, the RFP was posted to SAM.gov on October 7. And the current due date is December 20th of this year. Again, it was posted to SAM.gov. I’ve had some questions come in about if it’s on grants.gov. 

So SAM.gov is the only place that this is posted. The solicitation number is their RFX-2024-10032. You’ll find all the instructions for submitting. These will come to my email address, which again is identified on the cover page. 

The requirements, the due date, all of those things will be identified in the RFP. The goal is to have awardees selected in March and completed negotiations, completed subcontracts by summer of 2025. If you have any questions regarding the RFP, those can be submitted to the email there on the slide, [email protected]. And answers will be provided to everyone that’s looking at the solicitation on SAM.gov through an amendment. We actually posted the first amendment with questions last week, and if more questions come in, we do plan to address those in future amendments as needed. 

So then for the proposal review and selection, so first, we go through what’s called the best value selection, which takes into account both qualitative merit and price. So all of the merit criteria is laid out in the RFP as well. You’ll see that they are weighted. Different criteria have different weight assigned to them. And then there’s even some subcriteria so that you should have a good understanding of how your proposal is going to be rated. 

Then once we receive the proposals, we go through the evaluation process, which includes just an initial review, making sure that we have all the requirements met in your proposal. Then all the proposals that move on from there will be evaluated against that merit criteria that I mentioned before and will be scored based on that. And then once we have our scores put together and decided on those that will be receiving an award, we then notify all of the successful offerors as well as the unsuccessful offerors. And then from there, we go into negotiations in the goal of having an award granted. So, you can go to the next slide.

As far as what’s considered an allowable cost when proposing to NREL, I listed the FAR part there, 31.201-2. And that gives an explanation of what is considered allowable, reasonable, and allocable under the federal acquisition regulations and Department of Energy regulations. 

Sometimes with our subcontracts we require price participation. But we just wanted to identify here that there is no price participation or cost share required for these. Looking into if property or equipment is proposed in your proposal, we just like to point out that anything that is defined as having a valuable life, or a useful life, or having value after the completion of the effort, just if NREL is paying for that equipment or property, legally, we can claim ownership of that. That’s often not our goal is to keep ownership of it. But we just like to point out that, legally, if property or equipment is proposed on your proposal, legally, NREL does have a right to it. 

Specifying proprietary and restricted data, so you will—there is an area where you can claim proprietary or restricted data within your proposal. We just like to point out that that does go through a legal review. So just want you to be aware of that. And then another part of your proposal will be providing your acceptance or exceptions to the statement of work and NREL’s terms and conditions, both general and intellectual property. Next slide. 

So, the forms required through the solicitation—these, again, in the RFP, there will be a link to all the forms as well as our terms and conditions. So, you can read through all that and have access to all the forms that you need to complete. If you have any trouble finding those, feel free to email myself, [email protected]. Again, that’s in the RFP. Or you can even email the C-MAP email, too. But we require the Price Cost Proposal form. There is an Organizational Conflict of Interest form. You will fill out one of those, either the Representation or the Disclosure. Once you go in and see what those are described as, you should know which one is appropriate. But you only need to submit one of those, whichever one is appropriate for you.

If you’ve never worked with NREL, new vendors do need to fill out a W-9 and an ACH Banking form and then the Representations and Certifications form. And part of that form, you have to fill in your information for the SAM.gov registration. I like to bring this up early on because SAM can take a while to get through their process to get registered. So, if you’re not already registered and you plan to propose, I would encourage you to register on SAM sooner than later. 

And then one of the forms that is required for the proposals is the Sample Deliverable Schedule. So, because these are firm fixed-price subcontracts, successful offerors will be paid for completed deliverables. And so, within your proposal, you will have a schedule outlining what you expect to be paid per deliverable. 

So, you’ll have your price cost proposal that outlines how you arrived at that cost, your total cost. But then you will break it down by deliverables in that attachment for when you submit. And then lastly, invoicing. And for any successful offers, invoices will be based on those prenegotiated values mentioned in that payment schedule that I just talked about. And you will be paid based on the submission of completed and approved deliverables. And those will be submitted to our Accounts Payable Department. And all the instructions and the email and all of that would be in the subcontract. But that is how payment will be made. So, next slide. I think that was my last one. 

Sean Esterly: Yeah, thank you very much, Kyndall. And we are going to move now into the Q&A portion of this webinar. So again, just a reminder, if you have any questions, please use that Q&A tab at the bottom. It’s to the right of the chat. And you can submit your questions there. We’ve been answering some as we go as well.

Kyndall, I think I’m actually going to start with a question for you, since you just presented. Someone was asking if you could talk a little bit more about the property disclosure. What does—they asked, “Why would NREL act as an owner when these are public grant funds that are being managed? Or could you just help clarify that a little bit?” 

Kyndall Jackson: Because NREL is paying for it with NREL’s funding. Again, I haven’t seen a subcontract where we came back and asked for that property. We just like to give folks a heads up that legally, we would be entitled to that property. But that often does not happen. We just like to be extra cautious in letting you know that, legally, that is the case. 

Sean Esterly: Great, thank you, Kyndall. I’m going to read through a couple of the questions that we answered in the Q&A through text, but just for everyone’s awareness. So, one of the questions was, “A microgrid system designed not to be independent of the existing energy grid—would that still be eligible?” 

And unfortunately, no, that would not be. The microgrid is not designed to operate independently, then it would not be eligible. 

Similarly to that question, we had, “What is the minimum time off grid that a microgrid would have to be able to operate to be eligible?” 

We have not defined that. I’ve not tried to define a minimum off time because it’s really going to be application specific, as well as the context. So, what we would encourage you to do is really express why the grid off time is considered significant. We’re looking to cover systems that are focused on community resilience. So, we’re really thinking about days of independence, not hours. So again, think about the justification there, and we will consider those on an application-by-application basis. 

We did have another question similar to those. This question was, “Our system could operate independently. However, it’s more efficient to supply electrical energy to the existing community grid. Would that still be eligible?” Ian, I’ll let you respond to this one. I think you have through some of the other questions, but just to clarify. 

Ian Baring-Gould: [Inaudible] I’d be happy to. So yes, I think that would qualify. Again, within the solicitation, we’ve asked for this operate with significant amounts of time independently. We understand that if you’re connected to a grid, it’s always—not always, but almost all the time—more efficient to operate off the larger grid. 

So, if your two communities that are connected by a tie line or something of that nature and you get your community from the other microgrid, but you have your own system that you can spin up if you need to during times of emergency, line failure, or things of that nature, that is certainly eligible. Because again, if you have the potential to operate for a significant amount of time disconnected from the other system, then you would fit this criteria.

What we’re trying to avoid with this, significantly, is an emergency system that might operate for an hour a year or something. So, it’s being built at an industrial complex, or something of that nature. And it’s designed to give ultrahigh-reliability power but is not designed to operate frequently at all. And so, we’re trying to weed those types of systems out and really provide ones that support community benefit. 

So again, I would say, if you think you apply, then just work into your proposal about why you would have to operate—or could have to operate—independently from the larger grid for a long period of time, and document that within your proposal.

We have another question about, “What is the overlap between the C2C microgrid learning cohort and what we’re talking about here?”

So, from the partnership, not a whole lot. So, the micro—or the microgrid C2C community learning that just closed, I think, two weeks ago, it’s really the entry part into this dialogue. And so that is about a six-month process that we’ll work through what microgrids are, work with you, with your communities if you’re selected. But if you wanted to move forward after that C2C co-learning cohort and to look at microgrids, then you would fit right into the microgrid partnership. 

So, think of that as a boot camp—the C2C as a boot camp for microgrids. And then once you decide, if you decide that the microgrids are something that you’re interested in pursuing from a community perspective, then starting to engage very actively in C-MAP would make perfect sense. 

Sean Esterly: Yeah, in addition to that, I would say, if there’s anyone familiar with the ETIPP program, similarly, this would be a good follow-on opportunity after you’ve completed your ETIPP technical assistance that we could get you further along in implementing a microgrid, if that’s something that you identified through your ETIPP work.

We had another question, “Only 13 states eligible, any more details on the selection of these?”

Again, that map, what is going to be illustrative of which states are eligible. I do believe, but correct me if I’m wrong, that that is the community has to be within those eligible regions. You could have an organization who might be located outside that region. But as long as they are representing a community—an eligible community within those regions—that would be OK. 

Ian Baring-Gould: And going back to the reason, it’s a little bit convoluted, but it actually comes from the original congressional language that started off this process a number of years ago. This is a pilot year. And so, with this program going forward—and we certainly believe that it will; lots of interest within the Department of Energy Office of Electricity to continue this going for multiple years—the expectation is we will expand it to other areas. But there was some original guidance, and then we didn’t want to open it up completely because we were worried that we were going to get a little bit too big for this first year. So, if this goes forward, the expectation is that we would open it up to other regions of the United States but are limited to those states at this point in time, so apologies to others outside. 

Sean Esterly: Yeah, just to clarify Gail’s question, which was, “So, participation is limited to federally recognized western Tribes in the blue region?” That is correct.

All right, we had another question stating that, “The issue is the existing infrastructure. Construction of a completely independent supply infrastructure would be cost-prohibitive?”

Don’t believe so. We’re not saying that you would not be able to use existing distribution for your microgrid. But there would have to be hardware and controls in place to isolate that microgrid from the transmission and larger power system. I don’t know if you want to expand on that, Ian. 

Ian Baring-Gould: No, I think that’s fine. One thing to be clear about, the size of the money, the grants that we’re talking, or the contracts that we’re talking about here—not a lot of money. You’re not going to build microgrid systems with the resources that we have here. 

And so, the goal of this effort was really to help communities go from a conceptual design to a higher-fidelity design that they could then go out and obtain other funding sources for to allow a community—multiple communities—to come together around a solution, whether that solution be around the operation and maintenance space, or about implementing microgrids or improving their microgrids in a similar way. So, bringing communities together to engage around microgrid improvement. Or, if you have a microgrid system that you know you want to do improvements on but are having a hard time getting money to do that, this fund is here to be able to do small-scale improvements of microgrids. 

These four topical areas, we identify based on lots of dialogue with the partners that we have mentioned through this project that have identified these small gaps, where there aren’t other funding solutions that are out there. So, the Office of Clean Energy Demonstration has lots of money out there for big power system development—so, millions of dollars to be able to do stuff. They don’t have grants out there for “How do I design a power system?” And you need to have a power system design before you can go and ask for $5 million, or get a loan for $5 million, or talk to anybody about, actually, the construction amount. 

So, we’ve got a lot of programs through the government, through the Department of Energy and state energy offices and stuff to get you up to a point of, “This is what I want to do.” And then there are some resources out there about, “Now I know what I want to do—I want to pour concrete; I want to put things in.” 

And there’s a gap in there of, how do we get communities, multiple communities, to talk about this? And how do we do this kind of more detailed engineering work? How do the communities do this more detailed engineering work to get from a conceptual design to a project that they can actually start seeking funding for? And that’s really what C-MAP, the C-MAP solicitation, is designed to engage around is this gap between “I’ve got an idea” and “I have a project defined that I’m now going to go out and get millions of dollars to fund.” So, it’s really in this middle space here that we’re really trying to focus the resources on. 

Sean Esterly: Great, thank you, Ian. I don’t see any other questions coming into the Q&A. Give everyone just a few seconds here in case there are any more that you’d like to submit. And again, you may reach out to us via email as well if you have any more questions. 

Ian Baring-Gould: Moriah, if you could put up the last slide again just so that people can take a snapshot of that, that’s easy to do. 

Sean Esterly: Oh, and I do see—yep, someone submitted a question here. Let me just read through it real quick. And Ian, if you can as well. 

Ian Baring-Gould: Go to the anonymous one, a long question there about a community-oriented O&M solution for solar roofs to communities using airborne robotic drones, ostensibly for O&M of energy generation resiliency. So, conceptually, this would fit in the idea of, how do we improve the operation and maintenance, the efficiency of microgrid power systems? So conceptually, this is not—though, more on the R&D side. 

And the critical thing is that it needs to be community-focused. So, if you have an idea that you’re developing, you would really need to find a community that was willing to dive into this and work on it with you. And so, if the proposal came in from the community engaging with you for the solution to address the needs that they have within the community, then I don’t see a problem with a proposal. But again, it’s really community-focused, so you have to have a partner with the system that you’re trying to improve the efficiency of, not a theoretical basis of would this work or not. 

Sean Esterly: And we had additional clarifying question on eligibility. Is this only for Native American Tribes? No, it is for both Native American Tribes and underserved communities. Again, the underserved would be any community with a population of not more than 10,000, using the 2020 Census Bureau figures. 

Ian Baring-Gould: And again, the funding could go to a utility. So, if you have an energy cooperative that’s an independent entity that is working in, has a microgrid in a Tribal or an underserved community, it could be that the energy cooperative is the one that applies for the resource. So, it does not have to be a Tribe that does it. Could also be an NGO, yeah, and other nongovernmental organization. 

Sean Esterly: All right, not seeing any others, but we’ll give it another couple of seconds. And right now, the slide being shown does have that QR code to bring you out to the C-MAP website. Also has in the yellow text there, our C-MAP email address. Feel free to reach out and contact us there if you have any follow-up questions. 

We’d just like to remind everyone that anyone that registered for this webinar, within about a week, once the recording is fully ready, we have a couple steps we have to go through for that, we will be sending this out with some follow-up information. You’ll be able to access the recording, the slides. And we’ll be posting the Q&A with our responses as well. 

All right, I am not seeing anything else come through. So, I think we can go ahead, Ian, and wrap up. 

Ian Baring-Gould: Yeah, I think we can. Again, thank you again to all our veterans out there. Please follow up if you have any additional questions. 

Sean Esterly: Thank you for joining us today, everyone.