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he Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is the nation’s largest water wholesaler, providing water to 19 million Southern Californians. Transporting this water from the Colorado River and Northern California and distributing it requires tremendous amounts of energy. Fortunately, Metropolitan is able to generate a substantial amount of energy from renewable sources, including solar and hydropower stations that are built into its system at convenient locations. In this interview, Shawn Bailey, the power operations and planning section manager at Metropolitan, speaks with Municipal Water Leader about the district’s energy portfolio and the role played in it by energy recapture and renewable energy. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position. Shawn Bailey: My background is in gas and power markets. I started off in power plant engineering and development in the electric sector. I was involved with different departments at Southern California Edison and spent about 5 years with Southern California Gas Company before moving to the unregulated side of the gas and power industries. I worked in gas-fired generation development for Sempra U.S. Gas and Power, and then in renewable development. Altogether, I’ve got about 18 years of experience on the regulated side and about 19 years of experience with unregulated energy businesses. I joined Metropolitan in August 2018 as the manager of power operations and planning. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about Metropolitan and its services. Shawn Bailey: Metropolitan is the nation’s largest water wholesaler. We import water from the Colorado River and from Northern California via the State Water Project and distribute that water to 26 member agencies, which in turn distribute it to about 19 million Southern Californians. Metropolitan also invests in local water resource development and in regional conservation measures that benefit all Southern Californians and help them use water more efficiently. Municipal Water Leader: Would you tell us about the size and scale of Metropolitan’s energy portfolio? Shawn Bailey: Metropolitan has two main energy focus areas. One is the distribution system, which uses energy to treat and transport water within Southern California. The second is the Colorado River Aqueduct (CRA), which moves water from the Colorado River 242 miles across the desert to Southern California. The pumping operation on the CRA involves up to 300 megawatts (MW) of load at five different pumping stations and is our largest energy consumption activity. It uses about 2 million megawatt-hours (MWh) of energy in a typical year. We have a high-voltage transmission
A solar installation at Metropolitan’s Skinner Water Treatement Plant.
system that brings enough power in from Hoover and Parker Dams to supply about half the CRA’s pumping needs. We buy the rest of the energy for the CRA from the wholesale power market in the Southwest, either from the California Independent System Operator or from other suppliers, primarily in Arizona and southern Nevada. Within our distribution system, Metropolitan has 15 hydroelectric plants. They were mostly built in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the most recent one coming online in 2001. These 15 hydroelectric plants generate about 250,000 MWh of energy per year and have a total capacity of about 130 MW. We sell that energy under term contracts to utilities and other load-serving entities throughout California. This renewable energy counts toward their renewable portfolio standards and generates $12–$18 million a year in revenue for us, depending on the water year and whether the flows in the system are conducive to generating power. We also have 5½ MW of solar capacity, primarily generated by installations located at three of our treatment plants. We use that energy behind the meter to displace retail power purchases at the treatment plants. We also have ½ MW of solar production at our Diamond Valley Lake Reservoir. All told, these plants produce about 10,500 MWh a year and offset 20–30 percent of the treatment plant retail power load. That saves us a lot of money. Municipal Water Leader: Where are those 15 hydroelectric plants located? Shawn Bailey: They’re located along the distribution system at locations with suitable flow and pressure characteristics. The Metropolitan distribution system is largely a gravity-feed system, which makes recovering energy at certain points in the system attractive. For example, our Yorba Linda hydro plant is located at the Diemer Treatment Plant. We take a portion of the water that’s flowing into the treatment plant, bypass it to the generator, and generate power with it. It MUNICIPALWATERLEADER.COM
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