Huntington Beach Advanced Energy Community Blueprint - A Scalable, Replicable, and Cost-Effective Model for the future

To support statewide environmental goals, local resiliency goals, and the desire to include low income communities in the development of sustainable energy projects, the Huntington Beach Advanced Energy Community project developed tools that can perform community-scale energy conservation measures and distributed energy resource optimization and design. These new tools are capable of capturing the interactions between numerous green energy technologies, allowing a developer to test the technical and economic feasibility of a given combination of technologies. The tools were then used to design an advanced energy community for the disadvantaged community of Oak View, located in Huntington Beach. The resulting design used energy conservation measures to reduce electrical demand by approximately 30 percent, and solar energy with storage to further reduce electrical demand by up to 94 percent. A financial model was also established to use financial structures and mechanisms that support advanced energy community development in low-income communities. In addition, the research also determined the renewable fuel potential of the community along with the potential for an electric car share service.