Two public high schools in Virginia are about to operate 1 MW solar and 4 MWh battery microgrids as critical infrastructure.
Roanoke City Public Schools has been awarded a $450,000 grant from the Virginia Department of Emergency Management to deploy solar PV and battery energy storage microgrids at Patrick Henry High School and William Fleming High School, both designated community emergency shelters. Total project financing is $2.55 million, with $2.1 million contributed by developer Secure Solar Futures, resulting in no cost to the school division. This will be the first solar powered microgrid installed at a K 12 public school in Virginia.
Each site will host 1 MW of solar generation paired with 4 MWh of battery energy storage, bringing total installed capacity to 2 MW of solar and 8 MWh of storage across both campuses.
The deployment builds on 10.1 MW of solar currently being installed across 32 RCPS facilities under a 25 year power purchase agreement. Once complete, solar is projected to supply 46.1 percent of annual electricity consumption across those locations, generating an estimated $60.2 million in avoided energy and roof maintenance costs over 35 years. Operating costs will be supported through energy savings and revenues from participation in the PJM storage market. Target completion is July 2027.
During normal grid connected operation, the systems will offset daytime load and reduce peak demand exposure. During an outage, microgrid controllers will manage the transition to islanded mode, sustaining critical shelter loads from local generation and stored energy without reliance on diesel backup. Protection coordination at the point of common coupling will ensure safe interconnection and stable operational transitions.
The broader significance is structural. Public facilities are increasingly being engineered as distributed resilience nodes rather than passive load centers. State emergency management funding is emerging as a practical financing mechanism for microgrid deployment across schools, municipal buildings, and emergency services infrastructure.
As extreme weather driven grid instability increases, intentional islanding capability and localized generation are moving from optional enhancements to standard planning considerations.
Telepath Systems trains the people who make projects like these real. Our six week Microgrid Systems Foundations course with Cleveland State University covers the essentials of electricity and grid architecture, the core components of microgrids including DERs, storage, power electronics and controls, and load management with power quality and prioritization. We then build systems thinking with model based systems engineering and finish with practical integration and stakeholder considerations. Missed our October cohort? Register for our upcoming April cohort.