The Daily Agenda: Tucson makes power move

Tucson could get microgrids soon … Kozachik takes aim at TEP … Tracking migrant deaths.

Tucson officials are casting microgrids as the next step in harnessing the solar energy that beams down on the city 300 days a year.

While there appears to be a consensus among the city council members to move ahead with microgrids, they differ on what microgrids represent. Councilman Steve Kozachik in particular talks about them as a shot across the bow of Tucson Electric Power. 

First, microgrids need a bit of explanation. The ones envisioned for Tucson are small systems that use solar panels and store that energy in a battery. They can feed energy into the grid, or work in isolation if the grid fails.

They’re also increasingly popular. Microgrids are now used in dozens of states, according to the Department of Energy’s Microgrid Installation Database. 

Microgrids are a tantalizing solution for dealing with power outages that can happen when everybody has their air conditioners at full blast in a city like Tucson, which kept hitting record high temperatures this year.

Ooof. Those electric bills were nuts this summer. For the cost of just a few hours of air conditioning, you can help make the Tucson Agenda sustainable.

Since May, officials and staff have been trying to figure out how to set up microgrids in Tucson and where best to put them. Options on the table include various cooling centers and bus stops along the Norte-Sur corridor, as well as other spots in midtown and the east side. 

The council is attempting to get federal funds to pay for a microgrid at the Donna Liggins Recreation Center, which serves as a cooling center during the summer. 

For Mayor Regina Romero, microgrids fit squarely into her plan to make Tucson more resilient to climate change. 

“This summer we faced extreme monsoons and storms that knocked down hundreds of power poles and left hundreds in our community without power,” Romero said, noting the summer also was “one of the hottest summers on record on Earth.” 

Kozachik had a much more dramatic view of what microgrids represent.

“This is all about getting us … decoupled from the TEP stranglehold that they’ve got on where we get our power,” Kozachik told the Arizona Luminaria in June. “To the extent that we can offer more options in the marketplace, then competition is a good thing, monopolies or not, when it comes to cost issues.”

He pointed to TEP again at last week’s city council study session. 

“TEP oughta be embracing this notion,” Kozachik said. “Because they’re out right now proposing this midtown reliability proposal that is very divisive in our community.”

He was referring to TEP’s effort to install transmission poles, rather than put the lines underground as city officials wanted. TEP is taking their case to the Board of Adjustment on Oct. 25.

“Anything that we can do to lessen the impact on the power grid is also going to reduce their need for more transmission lines, more distribution lines,” Kozachik said. 

As it happened, TEP sent out a press release the same day as the council meeting. It announced a plan to build a mammoth solar power plant with batteries that can store enough energy to power 42,000 homes for four hours.

But as Kozachik noted, that solar power plant won’t be up and running until 2025.

“We need to move more quickly than that, and this is an opportunity for the city to lead by example and show that this is not a novel technology. Microgrids are used all over the world,” Kozachik said.

Councilman Paul Cunningham didn’t talk much about microgrids at the council meeting, but he made an interesting comment at a recent candidate forum.

Asked about Prop 412, which if voters hadn’t rejected it in May would have renewed TEP’s franchise agreement with the city and charged residents a fee to put transmission lines underground, Cunningham responded, "I think it may be time to be taking a look at a municipal utility model, anyway."

We’re not expecting to see TEP leave Tucson, and its large solar project suggests it intends to keep their promise to move toward more renewable energy. 

But it’s starting to feel like some of Tucson’s elected officials’ patience is running thin.

Ward 1 showdown: The Arizona Luminaria’s John Washington breaks down the Ward 1 City Council race between first-term Democratic incumbent Lane Santa Cruz and Republican challenger Victoria Lem. The candidates shared their views about housing, transportation and fentanyl. Washington reported that it’s been at least 30 years since a Republican held the Ward 1 city council seat, and there are four times as many registered Democrat voters as Republicans in the ward.

Four more years: The Marana Town Council voted to reappoint Magistrate Laine McDonald for a four-year term, Tucson Local Media’s Veronica Kuffel writes. McDonald, a University of Arizona law school graduate, started as the town’s front-line prosecutor and went on to lead the prosecutor’s office for Marana Municipal Court. She was appointed magistrate in 2015 and has been reappointed to two-year terms since. The new, four-year agreement includes a 7% salary increase.

Traffic alert: Tucson Meet Yourself is celebrating its 50th anniversary this weekend, serving food today and tomorrow from 11 a.m. through 10 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. through 6 p.m. For more information, including a list of vendors and performances, visit tucsonmeetyourself.org/. And with the food and festivities comes several downtown road closures. The following roads are closed to all travel through Monday at 4 a.m.

• Pennington Street from Church Avenue to Scott Avenue

• Stone Avenue between Alameda Street and Congress Street

• Church Avenue from Pennington Street to Alameda Street

Tracking migrant deaths: Pima County and University of Arizona officials are working with researchers in other border regions to create a database that tracks migrant deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border, Arizona Public Media’s Danyelle Khmara reports. Researchers and medical examiners in border states and beyond have been collaborating for the last two years to create a better tracking system to help gain understanding of how to fix the problem. As it stands, the Pima County Medical Examiner’s count is the “gold standard.”

“There is no centralized system used to track, enumerate (and) investigate migrant deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border,” said Daniel Martínez, director of the UA Binational Migration Institute.

More solar news: The Arizona Corporation Commission voted on Wednesday to revisit how much utilities have to pay customers who send energy back to the grid via rooftop solar panels, the Arizona Daily Star’s David Wichner reports. The 3-2 vote came after four hours of public comment, much of it from supporters of solar energy. Tucson Electric Power was among the utilities who urged the ACC to leave the current rates alone. 

157: The number of remains of migrants found in Southern Arizona so far this year, according to the Pima County Medical Examiner. On the map below, which the Tucson-based aid group Humane Borders created in collaboration with the medical examiner, each red dot represents a set of human remains.