Title
Resolution Approve a Purchase Order to Sesame Solar, Inc. for the Purchase of a Mobile Nanogrid and 3 Years of Maintenance ($333,000.00)
Memorandum
One of the core strategies from the City's A2ZERO Carbon Neutrality plan is resilience. Specifically, investing in our people and our place to ensure that we can all bounce forward, instead of backwards, during times of disruption.
Over the last several years, the City of Ann Arbor and our residents have experienced a notable increase in the number of extreme weather events and associated power outages and flooding events. In 2023 alone, the City experienced at least 3-multi-day power outages which caused significant impact to City infrastructure, service delivery, employee morale, and operational efficiencies.
To address some of these concerns, the City has been investing in onsite energy generation (usually solar) paired with energy storage systems (usually batteries) to ensure help that critical operations are able to function even during times of power disruption. We have also been working to expand access to resilience throughout the community, most notably via efforts to increase the number of brick and mortar resilience hubs in the community.
Given that community centers are existing, trusted community places, the City has been focusing on working directly with community-based organizations that either own or operate community centers to determine how best to support them in ensuring they are able to provide their critical services every day, even during times of disruption. To-date, the City has successfully supported Northside Community Center and the Bryant Community Center with transitioning to community resilience hubs. Plans are starting to unfold to assist Peace Neighborhood Center and Green Baxter Court with becoming the City's next two resilience hubs.
In addition to the above actions, the City has been investing in training A2ZERO Ambassadors, supporting residents with developing emerg...
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