How the Nation’s Largest Water Wholesaler Benefits From Renewable Energy

How the Nation’s Largest Water Wholesaler Benefits From Renewable Energy

A solar installation at Metropolitan’s Skinner Water Treatement Plant.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF METROPOLITAN.

The 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 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 doesn’t affect the reliability of the treatment plant operation. If you have to work on the hydro plant, you can take it out of service without a lot of difficulty and without affecting the treatment plant. It is strategically located at a point where we need to reduce the pressure on the system anyway. Being able to recover energy is a real bonus. One of our active energy projects is looking at how we can reconnect the Yorba Linda plant to serve our treatment plant load directly.

Work being done on one of Metropolitan’s hydroelectric plants.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF METROPOLITAN.

Municipal Water Leader: Do those hydro plants resemble small-scale dams, or are they enclosed?

Shawn Bailey: They look like a smaller version of the largescale generators you would see at a facility like Hoover Dam. They’ve got a turbine and a generator on the same shaft. At some locations, like Diamond Valley Lake, the generators also function as pumps when needed for water transport. They’re pretty substantial machines, with capacities ranging from 2 to 20 MW each. The fleet generates an average of about 30 MW per hour.

Municipal Water Leader: Does energy recapture or recovery play a significant role in Metropolitan’s portfolio?

Shawn Bailey: In terms of our overall energy strategy, yes. These plants were developed during the 1970s energy crisis, when there was a national push to find other non-oil-based sources of energy. In addition to serving those original objectives, during the California energy crisis of the early 2000s, the revenue from those plants helped offset some of our CRA pumping energy costs. With the renewable portfolio standard that kicked in about 10 years ago, those plants have again provided value for us and the buyers of the renewable energy they produce.

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your energy sustainability plan and what it entails.

Shawn Bailey: The primary resources that we’re looking at in this effort are energy efficiency, renewables, energy storage, and load-shifting flexibility in our system. We’re exploring options to reduce our overall costs and avoid price volatility. Metropolitan is doing a lot to manage energy price risk, but we’re also looking at improving energy efficiency and reducing our carbon emissions. The effort includes evaluating the incremental value of more solar generation at our treatment plants and hydroelectric generation on our distribution system as well as the potential for wind and solar generation along our CRA system. We’re also looking at the effect of the high renewable portfolio standards in California and the value of energy storage at our treatment plants and along the CRA.

The cost of fossil generation as a whole is rising because it incorporates the cost of carbon, in accordance with the California Air Resources Board’s cap-and-trade program. That increases the cost of power during those hours when fossil generation is at the margin. We’re looking at ways to increase the flexibility of our system to take advantage of low energy prices when there’s a lot of solar generation at midday and to avoid the higher fossilbased prices at the end of the day. Storage can help us manage costs, whether using batteries or some other form such as water storage.

The energy sustainability plan will essentially develop measures to reduce both energy costs and carbon emissions. This effort includes most of the departments within Metropolitan. We’re also coordinating this work with Metropolitan’s development of a climate action plan, which is a broader framework on how Metropolitan can reduce its carbon footprint. Those are the two major energy-related initiatives that we have going on right now.

Within its distribution system, Metropolitan has 15 hydroelectric plants.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF METROPOLITAN.

Municipal Water Leader: What is your message to Congress regarding hydropower and renewables?

Shawn Bailey: We at Metropolitan see a lot of benefits in the development of hydro and renewable generation here in the West. We’re looking at ways we can shift our energy use to take advantage of economical periods of high solar energy production. Our message would be that renewable development is a real positive, as long as it is complementary to our goals of providing reliable, highquality water deliveries.

Municipal Water Leader: What advice do you have for other water providers considering energy recapture and hydropower?

Shawn Bailey: We would suggest looking for locations where existing electric infrastructure can be used for interconnecting hydropower. Even if a project is not economically viable right now, evaluating these projects can create the option to take advantage of a project in the future if conditions change.

Shawn Bailey is the power operations and planning section manager at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. He can be reached at sbailey@mwdh2o.com.