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. At this point the dcbel is finally available, and I’m working with our Public Works Director and an engineer to cost it out and develop the details.

See also Energy and Climate and Progress on the Energy Transition