Ribbon-cutting ceremony marks the handover of Invinity’s vanadium flow battery at the Soboba Fire Station.
Monday 9 November 2026
Representatives from the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians, GRID Alternatives and Invinity gathered last week at the Soboba Fire Station near San Jacinto, California, to mark the ceremonial handover of an Invinity vanadium flow battery (VFB) system to the Tribe.
Above: Members of the Soboba tribe, the Grid Alternatives team and Invinity’s VP Worldwide Sales Colin Boone (fifth from left) at the ribbon cutting ceremony at the Soboba Fire Station (photo: GRID Alternatives)
The Invinity VFB forms part of a solar-powered microgrid that provides the fire station and emergency response facilities with at least 10 hours of backup power during grid outages and Public Safety Power Shutoff events.
For the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians, this system is about more than just storing renewable energy. The Tribe now has greater control over its own energy supply, helping to keep critical fire and emergency services operating at all times, even when the wider electricity grid goes down, whilst also contributing to reduce the stations energy costs.
That resilience is particularly important at Soboba. The reservation is located in an area classified as a Tier 3 Extreme High Fire Threat Zone and has previously experienced repeated grid outages, some lasting more than 24 hours. During major incidents, the fire station serves as an emergency response facility as well as an incident command centre and community resource.
Above: Jay Overbeck, Invinity’s Field Services Manager in the USA, outlining the benefits the VFB provides to the Fire Station (photo: GRID Alternatives)
Invinity’s VFB technology is especially well suited to this environment. Its non-flammable electrolyte has no thermal runaway potential, giving the technology an important safety advantage for critical infrastructure in wildfire-prone areas.
The project was developed by GRID Alternatives with funding support from the California Energy Commission (CEC) as part of California’s efforts to demonstrate long-duration, non-lithium energy storage.
The ribbon cutting provided an opportunity to celebrate not just the successful delivery of an energy storage project, but the handover of a long-term energy asset designed to help the Soboba community take greater control of its energy future.