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Energy insecurity has become increasingly common in Maricopa County, Arizona. Households are not able to meet energy demands, resulting in vulnerability and the sacrifice of basic needs. Various root causes and pathway dependencies have exacerbated this issue, creating detrimental health, societal and environmental outcomes.
The project, Energy Insecurity and Public Health:

Energy insecurity has become increasingly common in Maricopa County, Arizona. Households are not able to meet energy demands, resulting in vulnerability and the sacrifice of basic needs. Various root causes and pathway dependencies have exacerbated this issue, creating detrimental health, societal and environmental outcomes.
The project, Energy Insecurity and Public Health: Going Further through Cross-Sector Collaboration, aims to improve the health of communities by promoting projects that are community-engaged, action-oriented, and equity-focused (Interdisciplinary Research Leaders, 2020). Eventually, the final deliverable of this project will be an energy insecurity toolkit that can be leveraged by stakeholders to make a change in their local communities. To achieve this deliverable, a stakeholder workgroup was created to assess all aspects of energy insecurity in Maricopa County. To avoid typical pitfalls of stakeholder workgroups, the Learning and Action Alliance (LAA) Framework was chosen to be applied to the workgroup. The LAA Framework leverages social learning and promotes knowledge sharing between stakeholders (O’Donnell et al, 2018). The framework is implemented in five phases and can be customized to fit any wicked problem. The accompanying guidebook, "Applying the Learning and Action Alliance Framework: Energy Insecurity in Maricopa County’, was created to simplify the framework’s implementation phases and provide ‘real-world’ examples of how the framework was implemented into the energy insecurity stakeholder workgroup. The guidebook will be used by the Maricopa County Department of Public Health to facilitate other sustainability workgroups. Thus far, the Maricopa County Department of Public Health has approved the guidebook and is looking forward to integrating the guidebook into workgroup standard practices.
Created2021-04-28
Description
Before the rise in renewable energy, few people considered the consequences of adding large amounts of intermittent power onto the grid. As renewable energy has become more prevalent, utility companies must adapt their business practices to accommodate these unique sources of power. This is leading to challenges on how best

Before the rise in renewable energy, few people considered the consequences of adding large amounts of intermittent power onto the grid. As renewable energy has become more prevalent, utility companies must adapt their business practices to accommodate these unique sources of power. This is leading to challenges on how best to manage a grid with large amounts of renewable power. Arizona Public Service (APS), the largest electricity provider in the state of Arizona, has more than 70,000 distributed solar customers on their grid and the number of solar customers increases every day. With this increase in distributed solar customers comes the solar duck curve—the phenomenon whereby solar produces energy during times of low demand. However, with the use of storage, the duck curve problem may be mitigated. This project examines the sustainability of three storage options: pumped hydro energy storage, compressed air energy storage, and lithium-ion batteries. Using several sustainability indicators, this project makes a policy recommendation to APS on the most sustainable choice for large-scale energy storage. This project found that compressed air energy storage was the most sustainable option for APS. This considered the impacts of compressed air on the environment, communities, and the costs of this storage option. One important aspect to acknowledge regarding this technology is that in its current form, it does emit some carbon emissions. However, the carbon emissions may have less of an impact if this storage facility can allow APS to use its renewable energy assets most efficiently and continue to use energy from Palo Verde, the nuclear facility in Arizona.
ContributorsRood, Devon (Author) / Romito, Marc (Contributor)
Created2018-04-25
Description
This document contains a feasibility study that explores the necessity, collaborations, and
possible methods of installing a 1 megawatt lithium-ion battery storage facility at San Diego Gas
& Electric’s Century Park campus located in the Kearny Mesa neighborhood in central San
Diego, California. The battery will serve purposes of adding renewable energy to

This document contains a feasibility study that explores the necessity, collaborations, and
possible methods of installing a 1 megawatt lithium-ion battery storage facility at San Diego Gas
& Electric’s Century Park campus located in the Kearny Mesa neighborhood in central San
Diego, California. The battery will serve purposes of adding renewable energy to the energy mix,
reducing operations costs via peak shaving, an educational component for the region, and
meeting stringent State of California and California Public Utilities Commission mandates for
both renewable energy and battery storage capacity.
ContributorsShamblin, Sandra M. (Writer of accompanying material)
Created2020-05-15