Irvine Ranch Water District and Advanced Microgrid Solutions have teamed up to build the largest energy storage project for a public water agency in the country. And the project will not only benefit the water agency, but the whole region.
A NEW FRONTIER in the energy-water nexus is being forged in Southern California. Teaming up with Advanced Microgrid Solutions, Irvine Ranch Water District will be using an energy storage system to reduce its costs and help ease demand on the grid during peak hours.
The project is the largest of its kind at a public water agency in theU.S., and the 7 megawatt (MW) and 34 megawatt-hour (MWh) network will utilize Tesla batteries to store power at 11 of Irving Ranch Water District’s (IRWD) most energy-intensive points in its operations – including three water treatment plants, six pumping stations, a deep water aquifer treatment plant and a groundwater de-salter facility.
For IRWD, the largest water utility in Orange County, electric usage is the third largest expenditure in its budget, said Paul Cook, the agency’s general manager. “We move a lot of water, we treat a lot of water and that takes energy,” he said.
IRWD’s project signals a growing opportunity for water agencies to utilize energy storage, not just to reduce the costs of their own operations, but to play a larger role in helping to reduce peak demand on the grid, and thereby cut the need for more fossil-fuel consuming power plants.
Electric utilities have to deal with peak demand on the grid during certain times of the day (usually late afternoon), and customers such as IRWD often have to pay more for usage during those times.
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