Our team at Invest in Our Future believes that faster clean energy deployment will require building public support by uplifting the stories of the communities already reaping its benefits. All over the country, clean energy projects are cutting costs and pollution, while helping power essential services when the grid fails.
Today, we’re highlighting the story of Chiricahua Community Health Centers in rural Arizona. After struggling with frequent power outages, Chiricahua worked with IOF grantee and Builders Network member Collective Energy to install solar and battery storage across its four health facilities, ensuring patients can continue to access essential care the next time power goes out.
Imagine you’re sitting in the chair at the dentist — getting a cavity filled, your mouth fully numb — when all of a sudden the power goes out.
Or you’re at the clinic with your kid who’s getting nebulizer treatment for an asthma attack, and the whole place goes dark.
That was the reality facing patients at Chiricahua Community Health Centers, an all-in-one medical facility in Douglas, Arizona, located about 10 blocks north of the U.S.-Mexico border. As the only Federally Qualified Health Center in rural Cochise County, this facility serves a rural population the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. But it contends with extreme heat, wildfires, and monsoons — and even a passing summer storm can knock their electricity out.
On average, the facility’s four buildings were losing power once a week, often with no warning and leaving a staff of over 200 professionals and their patients fumbling in the dark. And because Douglas is at the end of the local power company’s service line, when the power went down, residents were left guessing if it’d take three minutes, three hours, or three days to come back.
Beyond the inconvenience, a blackout can literally be a matter of life and death: The nearest hospital on this side of the border is in Tucson, a two-and-a-half hour drive north. And when you’re storing upwards of $500,000 worth of life-saving vaccines and medications in sensitive, temperature-controlled refrigerators, losing power can not only devastate your budget but also threaten your patients’ health and well-being.
When Chiricahua’s leadership team was tasked with finding a solution to their outage issue, they first looked into purchasing and maintaining generators for each of their four buildings. But they quickly realized this would be too expensive, and also logistically hard to retrofit the facilities’ existing power system to integrate the backup system.
They soon realized it was cheaper and easier to turn to clean energy.
The realization came after Chiricahua’s CEO, Dr. Jonathan Melk, attended a meeting hosted by the National Association of Community Health Centers. There, he learned about health centers that had built their own microgrids using solar-plus-storage systems. And he connected with Collective Energy, an IOF grantee and Builders Network member whose mission is to help health centers become more self-sustainable by supporting the installation of these systems.
Working with Collective Energy, the Chiricahua leadership team devised a plan to install 312 solar panels and an accompanying battery backup to their facilities. Collective Energy partnered with a local solar panel installer that provides on-the-job training to apprentices on a path to full-time employment in the clean energy industry. Now completed, the panels generate enough electricity to run 100% of the health center’s operations.
“By installing powerful batteries powered by solar, Chiricahua is ensuring that patient care will be uninterrupted in our key Douglas facilities moving forward,” said Dr. Melk, “regardless of a passing storm or other challenges to the power grid that are out of our control.”
The battery system also stores excess power, which means the health center can keep the refrigerators cool and the patients cared for even when the grid is down.
“These projects are proof points that rural health centers can overcome the barriers of being at the end of the power grid,” said Andrew MacCalla, Co-Founder and CEO of Collective Energy, “and we commend Chiricahua for serving as a model for others to follow.”
Last week was National Community Health Center week. Fittingly, Chiricahua staff were able to mark the occasion with a “switch on” ceremony for the new solar projects. Douglas Mayor Jose Grijalva and representatives from Sen. Mark Kelly and Rep. Adelita Grijalva’s office were in attendance, and the event received local media coverage from KGUN and Herald Review.
Chiricahua provides much more than clinical care to their community. They arrange for coordinated care, medical records services, referrals, and insurance enrollment support. They also run a call center for medical questions and appointments and store all the patient records electronically, which makes providing care fast and efficient. These vital services only work, however, when the power is running.
Reliable healthcare infrastructure has broader implications for the region’s growth too. Businesses who consider investing in a community consider two major factors: access to reliable health care, and good schools. Companies want to invest in places that are resilient, and this move to be less grid-reliant by Chiricahua Community Health Centers is a big step toward boosting local resilience and economic prosperity.
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