By Benjamin Purper

In California, where the cost-of-living index is roughly 45 percent above the national average, community health centers are a lifeline for millions of people with low incomes or no insurance. These nonprofit clinics provide high-quality primary care to anyone in need and serve as the main point of care for one in 11 people in the United States — most of whom live on low incomes, are uninsured or underinsured, and cannot afford care elsewhere.

Patients arrive already stretched by rent, groceries, and the rising price of prescriptions. The clinics that serve them are stretched as well, operating on razor-thin margins as utility bills climb and demand for care surges. In that environment, every dollar saved carries outsized weight. When a clinic cuts its energy bill, the savings are not abstract line items but tangible resources: hours added to keep the doors open, a new nurse hired, a pharmacy stocked. For patients with nowhere else to go, those savings translate directly into access to care.

Microgrids Deliver Savings

That’s why Ampla Health, a Federally Qualified Health Center serving rural Northern California, turned to solar microgrids. With support from Direct Relief, the organization installed systems at two of its facilities in 2022. The result: tens of thousands of dollars saved on utility bills at a time when rates were climbing fast.

“The bill has been extremely low as a result of the system,” said John Fleming, Ampla’s director of planning and development. With those savings, Ampla is planning to expand services at its Magalia clinic and add an on-site pharmacy. “Anything we can do to be more efficient, more effective, saving dollars, that means more that we can do for the community,” Fleming said.

The story is similar across the state. The Free Clinic of Simi Valley in Ventura County, which serves a largely uninsured patient base, reports more than $11,000 saved in the first year after installing a rooftop solar array funded by Direct Relief. That drop in utility costs — about 40 percent — is now being reinvested in expanded medical, dental, counseling and legal programs.

In Shasta County, Shingletown Medical Center’s hybrid solar-battery system now covers 60 percent of its electricity use, cutting annual costs by an estimated $15,000. The system has also kept the clinic open during wildfire-related outages, when losing power could mean cancelled appointments and spoiled vaccines.

At Harmony Health in Yuba County, the first year of microgrid operations translated into $9,000 in savings, or roughly a quarter off its utility bills. In Sonoma County, Alliance Medical Center’s Direct Relief-funded system saved more than $13,000 in its first year, a 26 percent reduction.

“For a community health center like ours, those savings help sustain essential patient services,” said Sue Labbe, Alliance’s CEO. “Just as importantly, the microgrid provides critical resilience and ensures uninterrupted access to care for our patients during power outages or emergencies.”

The Value of Resilience

The financial savings are immediate, but the resilience may matter most. Many of the clinics with Direct Relief-funded installations sit in areas scarred by recent fires — Magalia near the 2018 Camp Fire, Simi Valley near the 2025 Palisades Fire, Marysville near the 2020 North Complex Fire, Healdsburg near the 2017 Tubbs Fire. All are in zones Cal Fire and the California Public Utilities Commission classify as extreme or elevated fire threat areas.

For these clinics, staying operational during a grid failure can be a matter of life and death. Solar microgrids allow them to continue operating when the power goes out, protecting medicines that need refrigeration, keeping appointments on the books, and ensuring staff can keep caring for patients.

“Utility bill reductions may be the most immediate and rewarding benefit, because they accrue savings from day one regardless of power outages,” said Sara Rossi, Direct Relief’s managing director of health resiliency. “Now we have evidence from several California health centers that these projects are delivering real savings that are making a difference to the bottom lines of our partners.”

Building for the Future

Ampla, Simi Valley, Shingletown, Harmony and Alliance are part of a growing cohort of safety-net clinics adopting solar microgrids through Direct Relief’s Power for Health Initiative. As of August 2025, the nonprofit has supported 11 completed installations across California, with 10 more in development. Nationally and internationally, more than $46 million has been invested in resilient power projects in the U.S. and 22 other countries.

For safety-net providers, the math is simple. Every dollar not spent on electricity, and every hour not lost to an outage, is another chance to keep the doors open for patients who have nowhere else to turn.