City of Walnut Creek Commissions 220-kW Rooftop Solar and 450-kWh Battery Microgrid at Tice Valley Community Gymnasium

Facilities engineers with the City of Walnut Creek Public Works Department and resilience planners from MCE commissioned a 220-kilowatt rooftop photovoltaic array coupled with a 450-kilowatt-hour lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery storage microgrid on Sunday afternoon at the Tice Valley Community Gymnasium at 2055 Tice Valley Boulevard in western Walnut Creek. Located adjacent to the Rossmoor senior community and Tice Valley Park, the 23,000-square-foot municipal athletics and recreation center serves both as a daily hub for senior pickleball, youth basketball, and gymnastics and as western Walnut Creek's primary emergency cooling and clean-air refuge.

Across the expansive standing-seam metal roof of the twin gymnasium bays, solar installers mounted 480 high-efficiency monocrystalline panels wired into three bidirectional smart inverters and an outdoor fire-rated battery cabinet bank along the north service yard. During normal grid operations, the solar-and-battery plant offsets 92 percent of the building's annual electricity consumption and shaves expensive late-afternoon peak utility demand charges, saving the city an estimated $64,000 per year.

Whenever Pacific Gas and Electric initiates a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) or a summer heatwave triggers a local feeder outage, an automatic microgrid controller islands the building in less than 80 milliseconds. The battery bank continuously powers the gymnasium's dual electric heat-pump HVAC air handlers, MERV-16 wildfire-smoke filtration banks, ADA restroom facilities, and forty medical-device charging tables for up to seventy-two hours.

The $740,000 community resilience microgrid was approved by the Walnut Creek City Council using MCE Energy Storage program credits and City Sustainability Capital funds. Residents can check gym schedules and emergency shelter information on the City of Walnut Creek Tice Valley Gym Portal.