Commercial, Energy Efficiency, Microgrids  -  April 4, 2023

Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians Add Microgrid to Its Resort

To benefit from cleaner and more resilient energy infrastructure across tribal lands, the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians (Soboba) will add a microgrid to its Soboba Casino Resort, which will serve as both an economic asset for the tribe and an emergency cooling center in the event of a community-wide power outage.

Scale Microgrids will build and install the microgrid for Soboba at its resort. The microgrid is designed for the facility’s specific needs, with Soboba financing more than half of the project’s costs through Scale’s efforts to secure funding from California’s Self Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) and the Direct Pay Investment Tax Credit.

Historically, tribal communities experience higher service costs, higher interconnection fees, more blackouts or brownouts, and remote and distant service locations. Distributed on-site power generation future-proofs power availability and gives tribal communities a competitive advantage on energy costs over traditional utility service. The Soboba microgrid will operate in energy savings mode when the utility is available and will also back up the facility during short-term and long-term outages.

Soboba’s 474,000 square foot casino, hotel, and golf course will offset its power consumption from 1.5 MW of rooftop solar and a 6 MWh energy storage system with 24/7/365 on-site and remote monitoring by Scale.

"This project serves our mission to strengthen our tribe’s sovereignty, self-sufficiency, and prosperity,” said Soboba’s Tribal Council in a statement. “We are responsible for helping our people and our land thrive for generations to come, and we believe this microgrid system is an important step towards advancing our objectives."