How-To Guide To Navigate the Complex Landscape of Tribal Energy Projects

MICHAEL SPENCER: Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for the Tribal Energy Program Review Mini-Series, covering navigating the complex landscapes of Tribal energy projects. Next slide, please.

Before we dive in today’s webinar, a few housekeeping items. To turn on live captions, click on the Show Captions button in the control panel at the bottom of your screen. To submit a question for presenters, click on the Q&A button in the control panel at the bottom of your screen. This is also where you can message our webinar team if you’re having technical difficulties, and we’ll do our best to assist. Today’s webinar is being recorded. The recording, transcript, and slides will be available on the Office of Indian Energy’s webinars website in the next one to two weeks. Finally, all registrants for today’s webinar will receive a copy of the slides via email in advance of them being posted on the webinar webpage. Next page, please.

Successful Tribal energy projects require more than funding and technology. They depend on the ability to adapt, plan strategically, and build local capacity. This webinar explores how three Tribes have overcome critical challenges, from complex supply chains and contractor constraints to project coordination and workforce development, by leveraging flexibility, planning, and education to achieve lasting project success. Next slide, please.

To kick things off, I’ll start with a few brief introductions and a snapshot of the Office of Indian Energy. My name is Mike Spencer, and I’m a Technical Project Officer for the Office of Indian Energy, and I will be your host today. Next slide, please.

The Office of Indian Energy is under the leadership of our Director and Deputy Director. Mr. Eric Mahroum was appointed Director of the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs on January 12, 2026. This appointment follows his appointment as Director of DOE’s Office of State and Community Energy Programs. Eric proudly served in the Trump Administration in 2017, also at DOE. Eric has a track record of forging partnerships, promoting innovation, and connecting entrepreneurs with America’s dynamic energy sector. Mr. David Conrad serves as Deputy Director for the DOE Office of Indian Energy. He has previously served [in] the Department of Interior and in other roles supporting Indian Country. Next slide, please.

Under the Energy Act of 2005, the Indian Tribal Energy Development and Self-Determination Act of 2005, Authorized the creation of the Department of Energy’s Office of Indian Energy. Our mission is to promote Tribal energy development, reduce energy cost, enhance Tribal energy and economic infrastructure, and electrify Indian lands and homes. We celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Office of Indian Energy last year and we are excited to continue our support of Tribal Nations as they pursue their energy vision. We are continuing to find ways to be more efficient and effective as we rise to meet our congressional mandate and achieve our mission. Next slide, please.

The Office of Indian Energy offers three main areas to support the Tribes. First, Financial assistance on a competitive basis to develop and deploy energy infrastructure and technology. Second, no-cost technical assistance to advance Tribal energy projects and energy commerce. And third, capacity building activities through webinars, workshops, and workforce development opportunities, with a goal of supporting Tribes in fully participating in unleashing American energy. Next slide, please.

The Office of Indian Energy supports Indian Country. This includes Federally recognized Indian Tribes, Alaska Native Corporations, Intertribal organizations, and Tribal energy development organizations. Pictured are two projects our Office has funded, featuring energy projects that diversify energy sources to strengthen energy reliability and affordability. Next slide, please.

To begin, we’ll hear from our first presenter, who will share Metlakatla’s experience navigating the complex supply chain and contractor landscape. This presentation will focus on the initiatives and in internal capacity building strategies that [are] helping Metlakatla overcome various critical bottlenecks. Please join me in welcoming our speaker, Genelle Winter.

GENELLE WINTER: Good morning, everyone, or afternoon, depending on where you are in life. This presentation is about our wind energy grant that we got here in Metlakatla Indian Community [MIC] a couple of years ago. If you don’t know where Metlakatla is, we’re the southernmost community in the state of Alaska. We’re the only reserve in the state of Alaska. We are an actual, true, islanded microgrid, in that all of our energy is generated right here on our island. We are not currently connected with any outside energy resources. There’s approximately 1,400 people, plus or minus, on the island at any given time, and it’s primary economic basis is the commercial fishing industry and actually the operation of Tribal government. Next slide.

So, in 2015, Metlakatla faced an unprecedented drought, and we were actually part of the body that worked together with the weather service to establish that there was a drought in a temperate rainforest. The drought severely impacted our energy resources, specifically that from hydropower. Because of that insecurity, we pursued wind as an option for an additional, alternative energy resource to support the energy portfolio for the Tribe. As part of that process, we had run into some challenges with our operations at our Metlakatla Power & Light [MP&L] Plant. This involved bringing on a contractor whose role was to support the project. However, over time, it became clear that the contractor’s goals were not in alignment with the Tribe’s, and so they were removed from the project. That left us with a little bit of a hanging area, but the best part about that is that the Tribal leadership stepped up, and they are able to take a more assertive role in project implementation and management across the board in regard to these energy projects that we have. But that meant bringing everybody else up to speed, because this had been a slow-moving crisis that had been developing over time, so we needed to get everyone on the same page. Next slide, please.

In fall of 2024, we actually were successful in getting the award to do a wind turbine energy project on Annette Island. This was exciting, and we were excited to move the project forward. However, we were running into challenges with the contractor, as the contractor’s goals, like I stated earlier, seem to be deviating from what MIC and MP&L wanted to do with this grant. On top of that, we were running into supply issues, we were running into challenges with trying to make sure that the turbine that we were actually even looking at was allowable to purchase using the grant funds, and trying to establish how we were going to make sure that we could actually logistically install this piece of equipment should we find a way to purchase it. Therefore, at the end of 2025, we didn’t have any meaningful progress on the grant. It felt like we had completely stalled out. Next slide, please.

So, we attempted to pivot. Now, MIC and MP&L is in the driver’s seat. We’re going to take control of our energy decisions. And we kind of were looking at what we have available, different projects we have, and one thing that Metlakatla has been working on quite seriously for the last 10 years is raising Chester Lake Dam—our primary source of water—but also our super-efficient, 1-megawatt turbine that’s at that at that dam. So, we reached out to Michael Spencer and his team, and we said, is it possible for us to request a change in scope for this grant? He said anything’s possible. If you ask nicely, we can try and see what we can do. So we put together a formal request to DOE asking if we could perhaps reallocate these wind turbine funds to raise Chester Lake Dam. Since that seemed, to us at the time, a reasonable request, and would still meet the need of increasing Metlakatla’s energy security. Next slide, please.

However, that request to re-scope the project was not approved, so that kind of put us literally back at the drawing board. We’ve been working closely with leadership and with our partners with DOE to try to figure out how we can still make this project successful. Do we continue to work with wind? Do we bring on a different electrical contractor, person or company, that is going to guide us in a way that is still in alignment with Metlakatla’s goals? The other option is always to return the grant funds and hope we figure something else out. Nobody ever wants to do that, so we’re going to continue to work the problem, along with our partners at DOE, and try to find a solution that is going to meet the needs of the Tribe, as well as the needs of our funders. Next slide, please.

I think the key takeaway for ourselves, as far as those of us who are engaged in the team trying to tackle the problem, is that Tribes have to remain in control of their projects. This one got away from us. The company that we were working with was moving ahead, and making decisions and applying for things that really weren’t in alignment with what the Tribe wanted, and then once we got the funding, we realized that there were some key capacity components that just weren’t in place, and just plunking a wind turbine down on the island wouldn’t have been simple solution to addressing all of the other infrastructure issues that were associated with it that would make it a good use or a good fit for the funding and for the community. So, as Tribes, sometimes we make the mistake of allowing consultants or managers to just work without supervision or guardrails or guidance. And by the time we realize that things are off track, we’re really off track, and we wind up with funding or different projects. It’s just not a good fit. And so, in alignment with that, the other key lesson is that we learned that we need to really work closely with DOE leadership and program managers. They are a resource to make sure that we’re able to navigate the grant award, the management process, and to make sure that we’re making good choices on who we’re partnering with to make the project successful. So, moving forward, Metlakatla and our power and light company is going to continue to work with DOE and other Federal partners. We’re going to improve the health and diversity of our energy system here on the Annette Islands Reserve, and we’re going to make sure that our funds are being used in the most effective manner that make our community successful. I think that’s it, so next slide.

Yeah, so thank you. Any questions? Feel free to reach out. I will mention that Floyd Russell is not on today because he’s dealing with an island-wide power outage, which is related to a significant wind event that we’re having on Annette Island right now. So, if you have something super technical, I might have to defer.

MICHAEL SPENCER: Thank you very much, Genelle, for sharing those experiences. And I must say that Janelle’s taken time out from her vacation to cover this while Floyd’s handling the emergency, so thank you. Our next presentation comes from the Navajo Nation Ojo Encino Chapter House. And we’ll explore how collaborative management structures and community-led approaches enable successful deployment of residential distributed generation. This session will showcase how local leadership, workforce development, and robust communication frameworks contributed to seamless project execution. Please welcome Tim.

TIM WILLINK: Hello! Yá’át’ééh, Ahéhee’. My name is Tim Willink. I’m from the Navajo Nation, a little community called Pueblo Pintado. I’m not sure where my slides are on my computer. Sorry about that. Oh, sorry, I got it here. So yeah, first, I’d like to introduce myself. Like I said, my name is Tim Willink. I’m originally from the Navajo Nation, from a small community called Pueblo Pintado on the Eastern Agency of the Navajo Nation. I work with the Ojo Encino Chapter House on the Navajo Nation. And first of all, I just want to thank the Office of Indian Energy and their leadership and our program officers, particularly Mike Vehar and Karen. They’ve been awesome to work with regarding this project. I’d also like to thank our partners, the University of Utah and Navajo Technical University, as well as our own leadership, President Werito from the Ojo Encino Chapter House; Gloria Chiquito, our chapter manager; and probably our MVP of the project, Dawn Tso—she’s our accountant. But yeah, this is, oh, and this is our project information again. We can go ahead and go to the next slide, please.

Here’s our contact and partners. Like I said, we’ve collaborated with some entities. The Ojo Encino Chapter House is the applicant and applied for this. And we partnered with the University of Utah. We work with their grad students on design of the solar designs. We also work in Navajo Technical University. We’re going to have some of their students out next week. And Darrick Lee is their instructor, who’s also a member of our electrical team. Next slide, please.

So just a little bit of background on Ojo Encino Chapter House. For those of you who don’t know, the Navajo Nation is about the size of the state of West Virginia. We are in three states. We have our central Navajo Nation government, in Window Rock, but we also have 110 chapter houses, and they’re more like county seats. They have elected officials and our own infrastructure. We get our funding from central Navajo government, implementing a number of different programs that help the community. And again, Ojo Encino Chapter House was established in 1951. We are located in the Eastern Agency of the Navajo Nation. We’re the second most-eastern chapter on the Navajo Nation. The Navajo name is Tsé Ch’ízhí Bii’Tó in Navajo, and that means, “Where there’s rough rock, there’s a spring there, and there’s water there, or oak springs.”

We are an LGA certified chapter. So what that means is that we are able to go for funding and resources independently from the Navajo Nation central government. We keep them in the loop, but also, we also look for grants and other resources for our particular needs, and this is the case for that program. Ninety-six square miles, about 800 residents, 97% Native Americans. Next slide, please.

Here’s our project overview. We are installing 60 residential grid-tied solar PV systems. The vast majority are ground-mounted, and it’s offsetting about 75% to 95% of electrical usage. This is like the low hanging fruit. There’s no batteries. It’s just a grid-tied interconnection. And, you know, I think we think it’s going to have a lot of environmental and economic benefits. Most of them are around five kilowatts and DC. So about 12 panels. And we work with Jemez Mountain Electric Co-op. They have a full net metering policy. That’s the local cooperative that serves the area. So next slide, please.

Again, here’s our location. This is the map of the Navajo Nation. There’s the Eastern Agency in the orange on the right-hand side, and there’s where Ojo Encino is in New Mexico. And yeah, you can kind of see the three states—Utah up to the upper left-hand corner and most of the nomination is in the Arizona side, and we’re on New Mexico side. So next slide, please.

I just want to throw this in there. This is a map of all the solar radiance, so how much intense the sunshine is. As you can see where Ojo Encino is located, we have been blessed, not only lately for these tremendous rains that we’ve been having in moisture, but also having a lot of sunshine. And that’s where we are located. It just makes sense to incorporate solar PV into our community. So next slide, please.

Here’s some of our project objectives. Again, this is a photo of our work. This is one of our crew members drilling holes for the concrete and the base of our solar panels. But transition to clean energy again, just like I said, it makes sense to have solar there. And also yeah, just move away from fossil fuels. And then also the financial savings. It’s grid-tied. We’re looking to offset a lot of utility bills of our clients and family members in the area. We have had experience before with our community. The Chapter House actually has a solar system on it, and that’s where we started to demonstrate to the leadership that what it entails and how much benefits could become from solar. That system is still operating after about eight years, and really reaping economic benefits for the chapter house as well. We’ve done a lot of the government buildings there on a previous project. But again, the financial savings is a big plus. Capacity building, navigating a Federal grant with the leadership, but also project managing, demonstrating that we can project manage and do the construction management. We have a warehouse, a yard where we store all the equipment, and also teaching and hiring-up local workers to get them exposed and build that skill set. Strengthening partnership with the local utility, also with the DOE and local community. That’s a huge thing. And self-governance, you know, we want to see more of solar in this area. It just makes sense. And we’re taking it upon ourselves to apply for these grants and carry out this project. So that’s our project objectives. Next slide, please.

I want to talk about this. I think we should all be talking about this as Indigenous Nations: energy burden. This is, it’s defined by the Department of Energy as the percentage of gross household income spent on energy costs. So whatever your household budget is, what’s the percentage that you spend on energy? Whether that be heating costs, electric costs, any kind of energy. So again, you divide your average housing energy costs by your average household income per month. I think it’s just something good to know, be aware of, and put a name on it. So 6% or greater of gross household income is considered a high energy household burden, high energy burden household. So this is DOE statistics. So next slide, please.

What is it for energy burden for Indigenous Nations? I’m sure people in the audience are aware of this. But ours is 45%. So that’s a tremendous energy burden for Tribes and community members. You know where we are, heating costs, propane costs—we don’t have the infrastructure. It gets cold in the winter, because we are 7,000 feet above sea level, it’s a high desert, so we have huge range in temperature. It gets really, really cold, but then it gets warm in the daytime. And the summers are really hot as well. So we use a lot of our resources on energy for heating, HVAC. And again, what that means, it puts a high stress on our communities, higher risk of respiratory disease, stress and economic hardship. Many of our communities are served by electric co-ops. So again, sometimes, the rural nature and limited staff is tough. Also, the energy infrastructure, if you live at the end of the energy line, if the power goes out somewhere along that line, you’ll probably have more power outages. And again, if you’re spending more money on energy, you have less opportunity to save and to build wealth. This is a survey by the tri-chapter area, of two other chapters in the area, 44.6% felt they lacked access to some type of energy they needed. Again, our energy infrastructure is not there. Twenty-eight percent could not warm their home enough to be comfortable in cold months, and 23% were reported no electricity. Only three percent of those with power use solar. So that’s in our communities. Next slide, please.

One thing we talk about is we wanted to not only provide savings, but we really want to touch upon workforce development and create local jobs. I have a background in solar. I started out as a solar installer, and I was a construction site supervisor with a company in Colorado. And so I know what that journey is like and the opportunities and the access. And so we wanted to train up our folks in that. So this is our crew or members of our crew. This is our, one of, I think, our first install out there for an elder. Again, you’ll notice we try and really have best practices in construction. Everybody’s in PPE. And you know, all of them knew how to pull a tape measure and had skills, we just transferred and expanded upon those skills into solar. Next slide, please.

Again, we also incorporate classroom work. This is our crew. We’re kind of a slow day, and we are testing mini solar panels as a learning lesson and doing volts and amps and watts, electrical basics and solar basics using a voltmeter and things like that, just to know how to use a voltmeter and things like that. So, some of the more technical aspects of being an installer. Next slide, please.

Here’s our progress to date. We’re doing 60 projects. We have 35 installations completed. Thirty are operating and saving clients on their utility bills. The other five had to have service changes, so we’re not really ready to interconnect, and that’s changing out their main service panels. This is the number of jobs we’ve created. This is our team in action. You see the racking. We are using microinverters, Enphase microinverters. And that’s the wiring. There’s a lot of benefits to using microinverters. And yeah, this is our team in action. Next slide, please.

This is another project. But this is our crew lead, Irvin Martinez. And one of the things we talk about again, this is Enphase. One of the things if you’re working on these projects is to consider O&M and the technology side. Now there’s remote monitoring, and it’s a really big emphasis for O&M. So again, a lot of times you do operations and maintenance with your phone, not with a screwdriver or other things. It’s communication with the internet, and it’s really vitally important, especially for warranties and monitoring. Making sure your system’s okay. Next slide, please.

Again, here’s our project status. We’re going to continue our installations, complete commissionings. Once we complete the construction installs, we can turn them on and energize them and complete the commissioning process and leave them on and set up the remote monitoring. We want to continue to coordinate with Jemez Mountain Co-op on the all the next applications. I think we have 15 more clients to get, and also to do their designs again. Continue training the local installation crew, particularly again on the O&M. They’ve kind of rolled with it and done a really, really fantastic job on getting into their groove and just being out there and getting these things projects done. Educating and providing awareness of how solar works and homeowner outreach. And then monitor the data, making sure the sites are working and things like that. So next slide, please.

We just got this as a sample. Since we’ve been turning these systems on, people have come up to us and said, hey, I’m saving money on my bill. And so these are three homeowners. Their initials are up top in the middle. The baseline usage was before solar, so 625 kilowatt hours in August of 2024, 465 for another client, and 711 for another client. This is what they paid before solar: $100, $80, and $111. The comparison usage, I think that’s after solar, what they were using. So, they’re actually using a little bit more. Here’s what their current amount do is what they’ve paid recently after the solar. So that’s the baseline. What you owe the utility just to be part of it. So, they’re not paying anything for the electricity. Their solar production is the next line, and that’s how much the solar produced in August of 2026. So, and then, I threw in PV Watts. That’s a website you can estimate in your area how much they’re supposed to produce. I think because of our solar resource, these systems are really outperforming and we get just so much sunshine. And then the kilowatt hour rollover—that’s how much the solar overproduce. So our utility, Jemez, will actually keep track of that credit and then roll it over to the next month. So that’s August, September, and then in the wintertime, when the sun’s lower, maybe using more electricity, you can monitor that, and you’ll probably use up that credit. The household savings, again per household, cumulatively is about $200 in August for these three clients. So next slide, please.

Some of our lessons learned, communication with all stakeholders, just making sure people are aware of timelines, realistic timelines. And working with Jemez, a co-op, we had had some delays. It’s a small co-op. They’ve had a lot of turnover. They’ve had a lot of new people, and their policies weren’t always straightforward. And you know, again, timelines. We are a little bit behind, but not really. I think we’re just trying to move forward. We’ve had a little delay because our applications weren’t approved in timely fashion. So we’ve had to lay off some people just temporarily. But this week we got 10 more to do this month. So the guys are working this month. The weather is always an issue. You know we had a bunch of rain recently. It gets a little windy out there. It’s starting to get cold, so we have to be really cognizant of that, because we’re doing concrete work. And then again, future maintenance. You know, a lot of the future O&M, again, is dependent upon remote monitoring, which you need good cell service, and maybe Wi-Fi. It works best if you have Wi-Fi, but not a lot of our folks have Wi-Fi, because it’s so rural. We don’t have the infrastructure yet. And even our cell service is bad. So, we have to go out there with hot spots and try and make things work. But those are all some of the lessons learned. Next slide, please.

Here’s our process. Again, we have clients apply. We get proof, some of the required documents. We need home site leases, a lot of signatures for the interconnection application. We’ll go out and do site visits. So assess, look at where we’re going to interconnect their electrical infrastructure and decide if we have to replace those or not, where we’re going to cite the system. Everything like that. We submit a design and interconnection application to Jemez, the co-op, with a one line. We get an installation contract with this, the homeowner. We do construction, and once we get construction we will turn on the system. Payments will come out, and they’ll program for net metering so that it reads the solar as well. And then we energize the system. And then, after that, we’ll get one year of utility savings demonstrating the savings. And then we’ll be done next slide.

Ahéhee’, thank you so much. That’s our presentation. This is one of our homeowners out there that received one of these systems. He’s a member of the community, and he was just really, really excited about his system. Yeah, thank you so much. I guess we’ll have questions later. But that’s my presentation.

MICHAEL SPENCER: Thank you for those insights, Tim. Next, we will turn to Barona, where the team tackled the complexities of various DOE financial awards. This presentation will highlight how Barona restructured and leveraged flexibility to adapt to shifting regulatory and market environments, and the lessons learned during transitional phases. Let’s welcome Sheilla Alvarez and Josh Simmons.

SHEILLA ALVAREZ: Good afternoon. I’ll kick things off today with a little bit of background on the Barona Group of Capitan Grande Band of Mission Indians. Quick little history on the Barona Band. They moved to the new reservation, which was known as the Barona Ranch.

And this is their second reservation. The original reservation, Capitan Grande, was established in 1875. In 1932, the people living in Capitan Grande were forced to leave when the city of San Diego made a deal with the Federal government to build a dam on their reservation lands. The community was paid 50 cents an acre for the lands that were flooded, which included their schoolhouse and cemetery. And after living for many years next to a free-flowing river, the families pooled their resources together and purchased the Barona Ranch, and moved in 1932 to a land where they had to rely solely on groundwater. Next slide, please.

The Barona Indian Reservation is near the town of Lakeside, which is about 30 miles northeast of the city of San Diego. They lived for many years without electricity or other services, and Tribal members tried to create a living through the ranch and farming. They struggled economically through the early 1990s, and in 1994, the Tribe opened the Barona Casino “Big Top,” and eventually became the Barona Resort and Casino, that’s still there today. The casino has become the means to a restoration of self-sufficiency, providing healthcare, housing, education, water, general welfare, and various community programs. Next slide, please.

Today, the reservation is approximately 7,800 acres. It does consist mostly of rocky, mountainous terrain, with the valley being what is mostly developed for both, the casino and especially the community side. There are 634 Tribal members, 202 are minors. There’s 300 homes on the reservation, for approximately 85% of Tribal members live on the reservation.

Barona is governed by the General Council, comprised of approximately 432 adult voting members, and there’s also a Tribal Council that’s comprised of 7 elected Tribal officials, each serving 4-year terms that handle the day-to-day business of the Tribe. The Barona community includes the Barona Government Building, Cultural Center and Museum, the fire station, the gas station, the Mission Church, the Barona Community Center, Tribal Enforcement, Charter School, Preschool, the Barona Tribal Water Authority, and multiple walking trails, softball fields, and community parks. Next, I’ll introduce Josh Simmons with Prosper Sustainably, the consultant that has worked closely with Barona on the various energy projects on the reservation.

JOSH SIMMONS: Thanks, Sheila. Yeah, we’re working alongside, Kathy Clenney, the Tribal General Counsel, and Bobby Key, the Facilities Director. We have a number of team members on the Prosper team, including Michael Burr from Microgrid Institute, and currently, the project in this next iteration is just re-entering the procurement phase, and so the, the selected contractors is to be determined. Next slide, please.

But the objectives of the community microgrid projects throughout the reservation really remain the same from what originally was driving the project to increase energy resilience, reduce energy costs for Tribal-owned facilities, advance Tribal energy sovereignty and independence, to be able to advance clean energy and cultural preservation, and that, all this is scalable throughout the community, and that the Tribe will increase more of all these benefits and objectives. Next slide, please.

So first I’ll touch upon the original projects. So, there were a series of three grants that Barona has for three separate projects. So, the first one that was received was called the Barona Community Microgrid, focused on its wastewater treatment plants, a water reclamation and, sorry, a series of domestic well pumps and filtration systems, a warehouse that stores food and supplies, and a facility maintenance services building. So, the original project included installing just under a megawatt of solar and a 4-hour, 350-kilowatt battery. And so, this was under, I believe, Topic Area 2 or 3 for fully autonomous energy store or microgrid system. So that was the intention, is to either have it be a single system serving all three sites, or separate systems. I think the original design and intention was for a single system. Next slide, please.

So then the second grant still is known as the Barona Scalable Community Microgrid Project, and that was going to include a 1.5-megawatt solar field in between the Tribe’s government building and the hotel on the east northeastern portion of the casino campus, and that was also going to include a 2-megawatt-hour lithium ion battery. And again, this was also under the topic area that included autonomous microgrid systems. So, this was going to kind of, you know, this was going to connect the kind of government side and the government campus facilities to the casino campus. Next slide, please.

And the third project was for, just, standalone solar, ground mountain solar in the field above that, that prior one for 2.3 megawatts, and this was going to be serving three of the largest loads at the Barona Casino Resort campus. And yeah, then those are going to be combined to a single meter. Next slide, please.

So, the original portfolio of grants, was totaling $14 million across these projects, and at the time, due to the expectation that these would be tax credit eligible, they were scaled such that the match was going to be substantially offset by the available investment tax credit. So, for the first grant, the match was only $1.8 million, but for the second grant, it was $4.3 [million], and then for the third grant it was $7.3 million. So between the grants, there would be $14 million almost matched one to one from the Tribe for a total of approximately $27.5 million for all 3 projects. Next slide, please.

So, I mean, this occurred a year ago last summer, when—well, really kind of before that—when some of the changes started occurring to the investment tax credit. So those changes in the uncertainty around the tax credit moving forward really forced the Tribe to step back and reevaluate these projects. And the budgets themselves have been developed years before, staggered over time based on certain financial market conditions. And as we’ve all seen, inflation’s been running rampant, out of control. You know, there’s been fluctuation with tariffs, and then as we’ve progressed with these projects and some of the development and engineering analysis, I found that project costs were increasing for a variety of reasons. In addition to those financial challenges, a number of citing challenges arose. The open space between the casino and the administration building that had been preliminary approved previously was no longer an option; and then, as the project engineering was advancing, there became concerns about the increasing costs and impacts to the Barona Casino campus and operations. Next slide, please.

So, my experience and Prosper’s experience is extended beyond Barona and working with Tribes and being able to restructure grant projects and scopes such that, ultimately, really everybody goes into these projects knowing what they know at the time. Often, the advanced engineering doesn’t occur until the development phase, you know, is not known until you get to that point. You don’t actually know actual costs until you run procurement, and there’s been a lot of twists and turns in the energy industry over the past few years. So, we have had experience in restructuring other grants, but not quite to the extent of this grant. You know, in that case, it typically—the other projects, including for the Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians and Pala Band Mission Indians in particular—involve scope modifications. But the budget remained the same. In this case, I had some experience knowing what it took and what was allowable and not in terms of adjusting scope. I did not have experience with kind of adjusting the overall budget and the cost-share amounts, or at least reducing it, and so, you know, as the dust started to settle with some of the changes that occurred in in the market with the investment tax credit, and otherwise, and you know the Tribe decided how they were willing to move forward, consider moving forward. We approached the Department of Energy about some tentative or proposed changes that, frankly, I was not certain were going to fly. So, ultimately, you know, also have an understanding of kind of the requirements of each of the topic areas. So, for all of you, when kind of considering that, if you’re going to be proposing scope and budget modifications, you have to go back to the original NOFO or FOA to understand what were the specific requirements that were applied for in terms of number of essential facilities, the types of assets that are being deployed, and does it need to be a fully autonomous microgrid system or not? You know, some topic areas require that, some don’t. So, felt comfortable keeping the scope the same within those requirements, but really the budget cost share decrease was really going to be the barrier, because the Tribe proceeding essentially covering half the project cost was not going to be economically viable. So, we proposed that to DOE to have the cost share be reduced to the minimum that had been required in the FOA, so that $13.4 million in cost share is being reduced to $3.5 million, which allows us also to pivot from larger systems on the casino campus to serving a portfolio of government buildings. So, they still include the admin building, but all those facilities on the casino campus, including the wastewater treatment plant, which is on the south side of the campus, are now outside the scope. So, we’ve been able to work with the Tribe to identify other prospective and promising project sites, and have approximately 10 lined up now on the cusp of being issued for RFP. This resulted in a pretty significant reduction in the amount of solar that’s going to be deployed, because the actual energy load of these facilities is much less than the energy load of the facilities on the casino campus. At the same time, the amount of energy storage that was serving the casino campus was somewhat of a drop in the bucket; wasn’t going to provide much in terms of resilience, at least for some of those larger facilities. So, the rescoping and rebudgeting is allowing for a pretty substantial increase in the energy storage going from 3.4 megawatt hours to subject to kind of what comes through in procurement of being in the range of 6, to almost over double the amount of energy storage at 6 to 8 megawatt hours.

So that the total budget across the three grants was reduced by approximately $10 million. You know, to that that minimum required cost share the investment tax credit as the dust settled still remains available for the energy storage system. So that pairs well with the increased size of those energy storage systems. So, the intention is to shift the kind of allocation of the grant funds to the solar and the other project components that will not receive any of those tax credit incentives moving forward. But, as I mentioned, the kind of, and also the projects themselves and their scopes are being redistributed to the grants consistent with the original scope requirements and the funding opportunity announcement requirements to ensure that the grants one and two still are for the autonomous energy generation storage systems.

And we may be adding backup generators for redundancy to those sites that wasn’t in the original scope, but it’ll be a value add for the Tribe for power outages. And then that third grant, which is focused on solar, will fund the solar across all of the sites, all the 10 or so government sites. Next slide, please.

So, one thing I will add is our appreciation to DOE, to Michael and Ian, our project officer, project monitor, and the DOE team, Josh Gregory, who was originally one of our project officers that helped us evaluate what the options were and help present those options to the Tribe. In this case, I actually didn’t think that this was going to work out, so I’m glad we approached DOE about it. On the flip side, the Tribe had a California Energy Commission grant for a long-duration energy storage system that was going to be paired with the solar, and the California Energy Commission was not able to be as flexible as the DOE was in terms of scaling the project and scaling the cost share, and the Tribe ended up having to cancel that California Energy Commission grant because that just was not a viable path moving forward.

So ultimately, the team at the Office of Indian Energy team know me, know me well, like, I’m not afraid to ask questions, to see what’s possible. I mean, the worst that can happen is you’re told no, they don’t always know. […] I mean, I feel like I drove Lizana into retirement with all the kind of questions I’d ask around the boundaries of what they could and could not do, and they had to figure it out. But I do appreciate that they were always willing to kind of listen and say, you know, and explore what the options would be, and work with Barona and all the other Tribes we’ve worked with to ensure that their projects can and will be a success. So yeah, we just want to express that to the whole Office of Indian Energy team that, you know, appreciate all of you, work with a number of you, and you all are doing your best to make these projects successful for the Tribal communities that we are all trying to serve. Thank you.

MICHAEL SPENCER: Thank you, Sheilla and Josh, for that presentation there. We do have some questions that came in, both during the registration period, as well as during our conference, or our presentations today. We’ll try to get to as many as we can, but please do remember we have certain time limitations. I think we will start with our first question going to Metlakatla, and the question for Metlakatla is, “In which way were Metlakatla Indian community goals and those of the contractor misaligned?”

GENELLE WINTER: Well, over time, the contractor got, I’m going to describe it as too comfortable in their position, and began to make decisions without verifying that it was within the capacity of the energy grid, if it was in the capacity of the finances of the Tribe. And so, that was when we had to put the brakes on and take over control of the project, so that the contractor wasn’t driving it, but the Tribe was driving it.

MICHAEL SPENCER: Thank you. Next question goes to Tim. And it says, “Tim, in your background in solar installation and O&M do you recommend any particular O&M systems for communities that do not have experience with O&M data collection?”

TIM WILLINK: So, we’re using Enphase microinverters, and they have a robust remote monitoring system. A lot of that’s really, you know, I’ve used other ones before. They’re all very similar. We did a tour recently of a project on a casino, and the contractor was there, and then they said they used a bunch of different systems that are all kind of, it’s very similar, but they all have their little quirks and things like that. I’m most familiar with Enphase, they do have a really good helpline. It is for warranty purposes on their end, so if a microinverter goes out and you don’t have remote monitoring or, the upload to the cloud is not current, they will not honor that warranty. And so that’s one thing definitely have to keep in mind. You know, again, their helpline’s really helpful. It’s a little clunky when you first set it up, but once you get it, it’s okay. But yeah, that’s what I would recommend for residential. On the commercial side, I’m not too sure about that.

MICHAEL SPENCER: Thank you. Josh, you have something to add?

JOSH SIMMONS: Yes, and something that I think is a key consideration early on in these projects, too, is thinking ahead, because data monitoring for ensuring the system’s performing the way it should be evaluating that data, ensuring that there’s a process by which, when inverters go down, that there is an O&M agreement in place and responsiveness, so, there’s attention on the side of the Tribal community, and then there’s an O&M service provider that negotiated that are monitoring and responding within a certain amount of time, so that the Tribe is having that responsiveness. I mean, I think there are a number of systems out there when you get into, you know, I mean if you have a simple solar project it likely is just getting it through your inverter, whoever’s supplying your inverter will be adequate, but if you’re talking about a microgrid system where you have energy storage, you have microgrid controls, you may have an energy management system. It’s nice to get something that consolidates all that data together. And then it’s also important, you know, particularly when the systems get more complex to, you know, people may look at stuff and see whether they’re working or not, but your goals might be to maximize your cost savings. You want to be offsetting your energy bill as much as possible, and frankly, the O&M providers aren’t really looking at that. Some of that requires remodeling the system itself. And you know, like what should have happened against what actually did happen. And then you may find you need to change some set points in your controls systems, your energy management systems, to ensure that the solar is working in an optimal way, the batteries are charging and discharging during the optimal periods of time based on your utility rate schedule, so on and so forth. And then, if an outage occurs, that the systems are performing the way they’re supposed to during a grid outage.

MICHAEL SPENCER: Tim?

TIM WILLINK: I just wanted to add, yeah, you know, have a installation contract with your solar contractor and go over all the warranties and play out those scenarios and really grill them on those. You know, what’s it going to cost me if an inverter goes out, you know? How long does that last? You know? What’s your response time like? Josh mentioned. I would also have redundancy within the Tribe. If you are applying and, you know, managing this project as a Tribal government, have other people in place as a part of a team, so if somebody leaves, there’s still that redundancy around. And… yeah, I think those are two big, big things there.

MICHAEL SPENCER: Thank you. Let’s go back to, well, Barona. We’ll figure out who can answer this one. The question is, “How do you learn about investment tax credits?”

JOSH SIMMONS: I mean so, they’ve been a moving target. It helps to have appropriate legal counsel. I am an attorney, but I’m not necessarily a tax credit attorney, although I’ve learned a whole lot about it. We’ve worked with Godfrey & Khan on this to ensure that we are aware of the latest changes to the tax credits and, like, and meeting all of the requirements, so the kind of begin-construction, start-construction requirements have changed in terms of when the project’s officially started. There still is a tax credit available for solar if the project gets placed in service by the end of 2027, which is a tight timeframe for many projects, but still is achievable for potentially smaller projects that maybe, you know, are off-grid or don’t, you know, or can have a streamlined pathway to interconnection. And then, you know, there are the foreign entities of concern requirements by which the components and the systems need a certain percentage to have been made in America and not come from certain listed countries. So, it’s something where it is important to ensure you have good legal counsel on it, on the front end. And then on the back end, too, when you’re filing for the tax credit, that you have good accounting, good accountants who are—and you know you’ve kept that in mind all along, too, that you document your project costs. If you have a system like we worked on microgrids, you need to segregate the cost for the solar and the storage, and potentially microcontrols, if that’s a separately eligible item, and it used to be, to a degree. So I don’t know if any DOE has had any of the recent webinars on the tax credit itself. I know that there have been a number of attorneys that have done presentations on it. I am also co-director of the Southern California Tribal Chairman’s Association’s Tribal Energy and Climate Collaborative, and I believe last summer we did do a webinar that did talk about the tax credits and some of the changes that were occurring at that time, so it’s not necessarily up-to-date and live, but I believe it’s on our website at SoCalTech.org, and you can go on our archive of our recordings of our Tribal Energy and Climate Collaborative Exchange Meetings. So, you know, there’s information out there. But it definitely requires appropriate attention. And unfortunately, it’s costly to ensure that you understand the tax credits well enough and can invest in them. But those costs that go into the projects that also include understanding the tax credits and getting legal advice and preparing those documents are largely also can be eligible for the tax credit, too. So hopefully that’s helpful to get you started, and then I could also try to pull the IRS— well, there’s a variety, there’s different IRS codes that have different requirements at different times, as some of the legislation and the rules changed. But yeah, hopefully, that that at least helps get you started. And I don’t know if people can share, but I can put the link to that that webinar recording in the chat.

MICHAEL SPENCER: Okay. Thank you. Let’s go back to Metlakatla. “And if you could advise another Tribe facing similar supply chain delays, what early interventions would you recommend?”

GENELLE WINTER: Well, supply chain, there was a lot of things that were associated with that, but really just trying to have better communication established. What we found out was happening was that the contractor was conversing with DOE, but Metlakatla leadership wasn’t necessarily engaged in that conversation, so we didn’t have any idea what the problems were until, actually, the general manager and myself had an offline conversation and realized that there was all kinds of challenges with the supply chain that we hadn’t even known were a problem. And the contractor was trying to deal with it all on their own. And so once we understood what was happening, we could help inform some of the logistical challenges of shipping things to a remote island in southeast Alaska that were not something that these suppliers had familiarity with. They were just really hitting a roadblock, because a contractor couldn’t answer. Well, it’s going to have to come by barge, and then once it gets onto the land, then you have to figure out how you’re going to get it from the barge to the location, and the road system isn’t necessarily going to support the equipment in its standard form. So you needed the local Tribal input to even get the supplier to provide accurate information.

MICHAEL SPENCER: Thank you, Genelle. Let’s go back to Navajo Nation and, “Was there any consideration in using biomass and boilers to create heat, hot water, and electricity for microgrids, and including pellets for home heating?”

TIM WILLINK: Is that for me?

MICHAEL SPENCER: Yes, Tim.

TIM WILLINK: We, no, not really. I think we just wanted to do this project. We’ve done a number of these projects before, and we felt that that was, pretty, you know, what our goals were. But we also are incorporating as more opportunities, is we are doing a separate project through state funding. We’re going to do weatherization, energy efficiency upgrades, wood stoves—EPA-certified wood stoves—and also many splits and heat pumps. And again, we’re going to incorporate workforce development on that project. So, a lot of these systems are going to go in, if all of them, where we’ve installed solar. So I think we’re going to look at that. These kinds of systems, including residential solar, are really rare on Navajo Nation. So we’re going to hopefully take that data and have lessons learned and present those because we want to definitely scale up if we are successful, which we already have some evidence that it’s going to be semi-successful in meeting goals.

MICHAEL SPENCER: Thank you. And, in Barona, “For Tribes entering a restructuring phase, what signals should they watch for that indicate a need to adjust award structures?”

JOSH SIMMONS: Yeah, I can field that. I mean, I think as you progress through the project itself, when, you know, you go from where you were when you applied for the award, you had a certain level of kind of design development that had occurred. And then, you know, you’re likely waiting for a year or so until you’re likely getting awarded and starting to get your project underway, so it might be a year and a half before you’re actually entering the procurement phase. So, you know, one sign might be if you’re starting to see different pricing and costs that are coming through in the procurement phase than what was originally budgeted that that likely could lead to you needing to restructure, there’s only so much site information and conditions that are known often at the beginning of the project for more complex projects, so as you start to advance with engineering you might find that kind of site conditions are such that costs are increasing, so from that standpoint… I think it mostly comes from cost pressures. I mean, with Barona, too, there were kind of different perspectives. I mean, each Tribe has election cycles and different members have turnover on Tribal Council; people involved in running different facilities, like on a casino campus, might change. So, another sign might be if you were working with some people originally, or you had original kind of buy-in decision from a certain group of leadership or stakeholders, and that changes. And you’re finding that there is different perspective that’s occurring with the change in leadership or the change in the key stakeholders you’re working with. Then that’s a sign that you may need to consider kind of restructuring as well.

MICHAEL SPENCER: Okay, thank you. And I have one last questions for any and all of you. “Were any of these projects done through a TEDO model? What were their other funding investment sources for project outside from the US DOE grants?” And I’ll let anybody answer who’d like to answer that one.

JOSH SIMMONS: I can start off by saying that none of them were done with from the TEDO model. There was other funding. Well, I mean, there was outside the US DOE grants. I mentioned the investment tax credit. We were also leveraging a $9 million California Energy Commission grant, and as I had mentioned that one ended up having to be canceled because they did not have the same flexibility that DOE had in terms of restructuring their grants. We for other projects, there have been state rebates and other state grants. We’ve been able to leverage for other Tribal energy projects as well. And then for one Tribe we also leverage third party financing to be able to cover costs and the Tribes out-of-pocket costs. Actually, there’s been multiple projects to which we’ve gotten kind of either long term PPA-like financing where the Tribe actually retained ownership. And that’s been, was a novel approach at the Rincon project. And recently, at Ewiiaapaayp, we helped them secure a bridge loan to cover the costs while they waited to receive the investment tax credit. We worked with GRID Alternatives to get a low-interest bridge loan to allow them to build out the systems to the optimal size, because if they weren’t able to get that bridge loan to ultimately receive the investment tax rate to repay it, they would have had to install smaller systems for the homes and buildings in the middle of the reservation, and the energy storage would not have been sized enough to get them for the entire year.

MICHAEL SPENCER: Tim or Genelle, do you want to answer also?

GENELLE WINTER: I, unfortunately, have no idea, because I was brought into the project a little later after the application, so I’m going to default with a “I don’t think so.”

TIM WILLINK: Yeah, I’m not. What’s the question again about the TEDO again? I don’t have any experience with that really.

MICHAEL SPENCER: The question was simply, “Were any of these projects done through a TEDO model and what other funding investment sources for the project outside of DOE funds?”

TIM WILLINK: The only thing is we have a match and the chapter house and we have also a partner with the University of Utah, and they provided the 10% match. And that’s what we have. That’s all I can say.

MICHAEL SPENCER: Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate the questions that have come in, and sharing in the presentations and sharing your knowledge with us and the projects that you have. If you have, as a participant, if you have any questions in the future, you can reach out to the Office of Indian Energy, and we will do our best to answer them. Next slide, please.

MICHAEL SPENCER: And let me see, we’d love to stay connected with everybody. I know some people have information that they want to provide to us. You can connect with us through the Office of Indian Energy through our website, found at the top of the page, through our newsletter, or through our social media pages. Next slide, please.

MICHAEL SPENCER: Special thanks to Genelle, Sheilla, and Tim, and Josh, for taking time to share their energy projects with us. We’re proud to work with them and with all of you on your projects that are reducing energy costs in your communities. Have a great rest of your day, and please take care.

TIM WILLINK: Thank you.