Humboldt County Case Study

Foster Clean Power A – Solar 4.45 MWdc, Storage 1.25MW/5.2MWh, Operational 2025

Foster Clean Power B – Solar 4.95 MWdc, Storage 1.25MW/5.2MWh, Operational 2025

Project   

The Foster Clean Power Projects provides Humboldt County with over 9.4 MWdc of clean electricity, coupled with 2.5 MW /10.4MWh of battery storage to provide energy arbitrage, time-shifting and resiliency services. 

Challenges

• $240,000+ in projected costs from original access road plans

• Risk of project delay due to incorrectly recorded water easement

• Utility easement overlapping the planned access road alignment

• Severe weather and soft soils, which created extremely muddy conditions and limited equipment movement

In the beginning stages of Renewable America’s involvement with this project, the team discovered outdated and inaccurate site documentation. A recorded water easement was incorrectly mapped, resulting in an unexpected encroachment on the planned project footprint. At the same time, a PG&E utility easement overlapped six feet of the planned access road alignment. These issues not only threatened project timelines and compliance but also contributed to initial access road designs that exceeded $240,000 in projected costs.  

Persistent heavy rainfall compounded these challenges by softening the ground across the site, making it difficult to transport heavy equipment and increasing the risk of construction delays.

Solutions

To resolve the overlapping easement and access road challenges, the Renewable America team quickly coordinated a joint site meeting with all stakeholders and mobilized multiple surveyors. Working closely with Humboldt Water District, the team conducted fresh surveys to accurately mark waterlines and secured approval for an underground cable management system.

Using this updated data and aligning closely with stakeholders, the team revised the system layout to avoid restricted areas, adjust boundaries on-site, and shifted the road alignment west to avoid the PG&E easement. The redesign also incorporated a heavy-duty temporary construction roadway system where needed, which both stabilized soft soils and reduced road construction costs from more than $240,000 to just about $60,000.

During the extended rainy season, this same temporary roadway system provided safe, all-weather access for construction equipment. Its strength and flexibility allowed equipment movement and critical work to continue despite saturated ground conditions, while field crews remained on site daily to make progress wherever possible, preventing additional schedule impacts.

Finally, the team installed gates at two different entry locations to maintain security.

Benefits

These surveys and redesigns were completed quickly and in alignment with original energy yield specifications, allowing the construction team to proceed without compromising compliance, performance, cost, or the project schedule. This redesign reduced construction costs by 75% (over $180,000) and accelerated the production timeline by six weeks.