A 1-MW solar installation at EMWD’s San Jacinto Valley Regional Water Reclamation Facility.
Eastern Municipal Water District's Solar Initiative
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astern Municipal Water District (EMWD) provides water, wastewater, and recycled water to more than 825,000 people in Riverside County, California, and in so doing uses more than 100 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy a year. In order to save money, diversify its energy portfolio, and reduce emissions, EMWD is moving forward with an ambitious set of solar power installations that by the end of 2020 will produce around 58.6 million kWh per year. In this interview, EMWD Senior Director of Administrative Services Dan Howell tells Municipal Water Leader about the district’s renewable energy initiative and the lessons it holds for other municipal water service providers. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.
16 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER
Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about EMWD and its services. Dan Howell: We are a water, wastewater, and recycled water agency covering the western third of Riverside County. Our service area is 555 square miles. We have four operating regional water reclamation facilities with tertiary treatment
PHOTO COURTESY OF EMWD.
Dan Howell: I’m the senior director of administrative services and have now been at EMWD for 28 years. My background is in the contracts and procurement field. Fairly early in my career here, I took a detour into operations, which is how I got involved in energy management. At the time, the district was quite a bit smaller and we didn’t really have anyone keeping track of our energy expenditures. That was also the time when electric deregulation in California was occurring, around 1996. As deregulation moved
forward, we needed someone to focus on the changes, and I received a crash course in all things energy management. I subsequently returned to the contracts side of our district as a department director but retained responsibility for energy management. The administration and business aspects of energy had become much more prominent in the wake of deregulation and were becoming as important as the engineering and operational components. For several years, I also managed procurement and contracts, customer service, meters, fleet services, billing, and records management, among other things, until about 2 years ago, when we realized that we needed a dedicated resource to manage our energy activities. That’s when we created a position and brought Sam Robinson, our energy program manager, into the department. Sam handles our day-to-day energy management responsibilities and coordinates energy-saving projects and initiatives throughout the organization.
