Lighthouse Mission Ministries Microgrid
Bellingham, WA · Lighthouse Mission Ministries · Operational since 2024
115 kW solar · 125 kW / 550 kWh storage · critical loads served
Purpose
The Mission's enhanced shelter opened in 2024, offering a wider range of care than a night shelter and helping keep people from returning to homelessness. Without the microgrid, it would have risked winter outages that would have impacted frontline services. Solar, storage, and controls now power the building's critical loads through a grid outage, including the emergency elevator for residents with mobility issues.
In its first year, the system generated 104 MWh and offset around 30 percent of the Mission's previous energy costs. Separately, the Mission secured more than $500,000 in federal tax credits on the project with technical assistance through Washington's Clean Energy Tax Credit Assistance Program, which supplemented a significant grant from the Washington State Department of Commerce to fund the project.
Where the Sulis team started
This is not a Sulis project. It predates the company. Mills Electric and Cascadia Renewables delivered it, and it was the first job the two firms worked on together as project partners. That same team later delivered the Orcas Center microgrid as a joint venture, then founded Sulis Energy in 2024. The people who built this building's microgrid now run Sulis projects, and they have worked together continuously since. It is on this page because it is where the Sulis story starts, and the Sulis team continues to support the project to this day.
