The Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award (GEELA) is California’s highest environmental honor -- recognizing individuals, organizations, and businesses that have demonstrated exceptional leadership and made notable, voluntary contributions in conserving California’s precious resources, protecting and enhancing our environment, building public-private partnerships and strengthening the state’s economy.

This year, SimpliPhi was thrilled to see our partners at Stone Edge Farm recognized for using “advanced technology to generate, store and distribute clean energy to its property and beyond” as one of a select group of awardees in the Sustainable Practices category.

SimpliPhi’s non-toxic energy storage solutions play an essential role in Stone Edge’s advanced energy microgrid. A bank of PHI 3.4 kWh batteries in the estate’s Zen building provide power to the ‘critical grid’ portion of farm operations which is used to power a subset of facility functions that must never lose power should the grid go down. SimpliPhi batteries are the only batteries in the Stone Edge Farm microgrid that could be installed inside a building because they do not pose a risk of thermal runaway or fire, or require thermal monitoring or control equipment.

A SimpliPhi AccESS unit has also been installed on the farm. Thanks to its compact design, the AccESS was installed in a small walkway with very limited space, yet it’s superior energy density ensures significant energy storage capacity. Because the AccESS is plug-and-play, it also eliminated the need to install other electrical equipment in order to create additional integrated storage for resiliency on the farm.

Stone Edge’s microgrid generates, stores and distributes all the renewable energy required to power the entire 16-acre property, and more. The Heila IQ software platform intelligently and seamlessly manages the many assets built into the microgrid. The Helia IQ is so effective that the entire estate “islanded” and ran independently from the grid during the October 2017 Santa Rosa wildfires. Despite being evacuated, the farm continued operations both during and long after the fires had been extinguished -- even as other Sonoma and Santa Rosa residents and businesses continued to deal with pervasive power outages.

SimpliPhi is proud to be part of Stone Edge Farm’s living microgrid laboratory, demonstrating to the world what is possible when it comes to resilient, sustainable clean energy, even in the face of catastrophic fires and power outages.

For more from California and Governor Brown, stay tuned for our next blog post that will take you on a tour of the SimpliPhi-powered microgrid installation at the Governor’s ranch.