Yucaipa Valley Water District

Partner John Fitzgerald Weaver was contracted to support the Yucaipa Valley Water District (YVWD) to determine the feasibility of constructing a solar power, plus battery, and gas generator backup system to protect their two water facilities.

The importance of this project was brought into sharp focus when a wildfire burnt along the edges of the YVWD’s water treatment facility and workers were denied access to the backup power generators which needed to be manually started. This new project includes a safeguard wherein automatic backup power will engage to run the facility when the grid goes down, thus maintaining uninterrupted water services for the community. 

Weaver worked with the YVWD’s professional team to determine the key strengths and needs of the YVWD sites:

1. Understand the energy needs at the two YVWD sites – the water pumping and water treatment facilities.
   1. Water pumping systems need to run to keep water moving. This is especially important in a semi-arid region – like the Yucaipa Valley.
   2. The water treatment facility uses a much larger amount of electricity, and has a hard requirement of not going down for more than 24 hours at any time, or risk a two week or more shut down. The treatment facility depends on cultures of bacteria to clean water, and without electricity to run fans that aerate the water – the bacteria dies, and need multiple weeks to be brought back to operating abilities.
2. The YVWD uses greater than 20 million kilowatt hours a year spread across greater than 60 unique electricity meters.
3. The YVWD has limited land space available, meaning we can’t 100% power the facilities. For instance, the only land available at the water treatment facility was located above the site on a ridge with very irregularly shaped land space.

Some of the positive determinations included:

1. There was enough land space to cover 75% of the electricity demand.
2. The State of California has very expensive electricity, plus incentives for energy storage available. These help the financial aspects of the project significantly.
3. Both sites have natural gas hookups available.
4. It was determined that a certain mix of solar panels and energy storage could 100% backup each of the facilities for seventy two hours 95% of the time. A natural gas generator was integrated into the system to push the 95% to 100%, while keeping emissions down.

In the end, the third party development company – and long term asset owner – that Weaver found for the YVWD, projects that it will save the public greater than $73 million over the life of the 28 year power purchase agreement that has been signed. The project is currently working its ways through the Southern California Edison interconnection process.