17671.
(a) (1) For the 2020–21, 2021–22, and 2022–23 fiscal years, the sum of three hundred million dollars ($300,000,000) is hereby appropriated in each of those fiscal years from the General Fund to the Energy Commission to administer a program to provide resiliency grant funding and technical assistance to local educational agencies for the installation of energy storage systems.(2) Notwithstanding any other law, the amount appropriated in paragraph (1) shall not be deemed to be “General Fund revenues appropriated for school districts,” as defined in subdivision (c) of Section 41202, and shall not be included within the “total allocations to school districts and community college districts from General Fund proceeds of taxes appropriated pursuant to Article XIII B,” as defined in subdivision (e) of Section 41202, for purposes of meeting the minimum funding requirements for school districts and community college districts imposed by Section 8 of Article XVI of the California Constitution.
(b) (1) A local educational agency that seeks grant funding pursuant to this chapter shall apply to the Energy Commission. The Energy Commission shall establish quarterly application deadlines for these purposes.
(2) The Energy Commission shall allocate resiliency grant funding to local educational agencies in the following order of priority:
(A) Community schools.
(B) Projects for school facilities, including school campuses, administrative offices, and operations facilities, in priority development communities that are also in high fire threat districts or in locations that have experienced at least one public safety power shutoff event, if funding for the site is not available from the equity resiliency budget of the self generation incentive program established pursuant to Section 379.6 of the Public Utilities Code.
(C) Projects for school facilities in priority development communities that are not in high fire threat districts but are in locations that have experienced at least one public safety power shutoff event.
(D) Projects for school facilities in high fire threat districts, or in locations that have experienced at least one public safety power shutoff event, but that are not in a priority development community.
(E) Projects for school facilities that have existing solar energy systems, or solar-plus-storage systems.
(F) Projects for schools that serve as community emergency centers.
(G) Projects for a local educational agency that includes an energy resiliency plan in an application for modernization funding to the Office of Public School Construction.
(c) A local educational agency shall not use a sole source process to award grant funding pursuant to this chapter. A local educational agency may use the best value criteria, as defined in paragraph (1) of subdivision (c) of former Section 20133 of the Public Contract Code, as that section read on December 31, 2014, to award grant funding pursuant to this chapter.
(d) (1) A grant provided pursuant to this section shall cover 80 percent of the project cost, except for a low-income school, in which case the grant shall cover 95 percent of the project cost.
(2) Project cost includes the costs of any of the following:
(A) An energy storage system and associated components.
(B) Energy controls to operate the energy storage system during an outage of the electric grid.
(C) Electrical work and equipment needed to configure the connection of the solar and energy storage systems so that they can operate during an outage of the electric grid.
(D) Electrical work to isolate circuits to be served by the energy storage system.
(3) A project is eligible for funding if it is financed and owned by the local educational agency or financed and owned by a third party that has a power purchase or energy services agreement with the local educational agency.