Spotlight: Chiricahua community health centers

Chiricahua Community Health Center serves a rural population of approximately 125,000 people in Cochise County, located in Arizona on the US-Mexico border. This area of Arizona frequently experiences power outages - there were more than 10 in the first six months of 2024 alone - and is also prone to extreme heat, wildfires, and monsoons. 

Reliable power is essential at Chiricahua Community Health Centers, the only Federally Qualified Health Center in the county and the largest primary care organization in southeastern Arizona, so the network of facilities set about installing solar + storage with Collective Energy. The project will cover the Chiricahua family medicine and dental centers, Early Childhood and Pediatric Centers of Excellence (including a Women, Infants and Children Program clinic with eligibility and enrollment services), an administrative building (housing the finance department, and health center eligibility and enrollment services), an administrative call center, and a full-service pharmacy that is co-located with an acute care clinic. 

Plans are underway to install a fifth system when construction is complete on the new Chiricahua health center in Willcox, AZ. Collective Energy has been working with the Chiricahua team since the construction planning phase and is excited to see this project completed. It's already a DOE award winner!