Working with town Council and Staff, we are currently preparing a Request for Proposals to build an advanced Solar+Battery Microgrid that could potentially power all the Town buildings - the Pavilion, Town Hall/Police, the Fire Station, the Community Center, the Women’s Club and the Public Works Corp Yard - all during a power outage!

This idea has been long in the making, starting with the installation in 2009 of the large solar array on the Pavilion roof. Those solar panels have served the town well, producing revenue as the system was paid off over years. However, two things have changed: the revenue from solar alone is about to drop to very little with changes in the Net Energy Metering contract available to let energy be sold back to the grid at retail rates; and it is now much more feasible to add batteries to such a system, providing power when the grid is down (the 2009 system has no batteries and shuts down during a power outage).

To see more about this exciting opportunity and its array of benefits, see the staff report or listen to the presentation and discussion (at 1:52) at the August 5 2026 Council Meeting. It is extremely gratifying to see the unanimous support of Council and every member of the public who spoke!

The Project has a Long History

In 2019 when Fairfax had no electricity for days due to a Public Safety Power Shutoff, the Fairfax Police graciously allowed people to charge their phones and laptops in the hallway of Town Hall. This was much appreciated, and we saw power strips plugged into power strips, all the way outside Town Hall, as people watched their devices charge — while listening to the roar of the diesel generator a few feet away that kept the building running.

In those dark days I had a thought: the Pavilion has a quite large solar array on the roof, but the inverters connected to this solar shut down when the grid is down. What if we upgraded to new inverters that had battery storage so they would continue to power our buildings during a power outage?

We formed a subcommittee of the Climate Action Committee to look into this possibility. David Haskell (who installed solar+battery systems for a living), and Courtney Richardson (an engineer and Fairfax resident) and I researched the possibility, and saw that it was certainly feasible — and focused immediately on the Pavilion being powered as a Resilience Center. Instead of waiting in the hallway to charge our phone during a power outage, we could be in the Pavilion, where we could play music, watch movies, get WiFi, maybe even use the kitchen!

As we were thinking about this, David brought us news of an exciting new inverter called the dcbel, that not only would connect to the solar, to the building wiring, to batteries, and to the grid when it was running, but also connect to an electric vehicle (EV) to use the EV battery as storage to power the Pavilion for days if needed. I brought this idea to Council, who supported continuing to research the details.

Unfortunately, the dcbel, as a very innovative new kind of inverter, went through a long period gaining regulatory approval, made even longer by Covid. In the meantime, this “Pavilion Project” and the longer-term vision of including other Town buildings, has gained a lot of attention countywide; Fairfax has the honor of it being endorsed as one of seven top climate solutions by MarinCAN (formerly Drawdown Marin). MCE is following our progress, as are other towns.

While the dcbel is finally available (and would definitely be something to consider for your home), the original larger vision of a full Microgrid was brought forth by Mayor Hellman in January 2026, then selected as a 2026 goal by Council. Since then, now as the designated “Content Expert”, I have had the great pleasure of working with our staff, led by Climate Coordinator Bridget Wipfler, to bring the project to reality. Stay tuned as Fairfax shows our leadership again!

See also Progress on the Energy Transition