October 22, 2009

Water department to

share MDM system

The City of Glendale, Calif, is hiring KEMA to help it build a smart grid roadmap, Craig Kuennen, project sponsor for AMI-Smart Grid Initiative at Glendale Water & Power (GWP), told us yesterday.  The consultancy will be paid $980,000 to help the municipal utility put AMI and MDM systems in place in the next two years.

          “We've signed a contract with Itron and had a kickoff meeting, and we're getting ready to go full speed here,” Kuennen added.  That $28 million contract includes 83,000 smart meters for power, as well as Itron's MDM system for the firm's electricity meters and its 34,000 water meters.

          The initiative is somewhat unusual in that GWP is pairing water and power (SGT, Apr-29).

          “We're looking at putting in a Tropos wireless backhaul system in conjunction with the fiber optic system we have in place,” Kuennen said, noting that water and power data would flow through the same MDM system.

          The water-power combination in GWP's automation plans only makes sense, he added.  “We are one utility.  It does not make sense for [the water operations] to have to maintain their own backhaul.” And while the Tropos WAN takes a higher upfront expense compared with AT&T's GPRS system, the WAN saves money over time.

          GWP is exploring with Itron and other vendors load-forecasting models and management of distribution, assets and outages, said Kuennen.

          “We've had a number of [smart grid] workshops.  We will be going into the design phase in the next few weeks.  We will hire an installation contractor in the next few weeks” and shop around for computer equipment needed for MDM, he added.

          GWP plans to run a “proof of concept” with 1,000 electric and 500 water meters plus 300 in-home energy displays, January-March and then focus on “full-scale implementation starting in July,” Kuennen said.

          The smart grid should be completed in Glendale in 2011, KEMA told the press yesterday.

          GWP is among those hoping DOE will come to its aid.  The firm applied for a $20 million matching grant that would go a long way toward getting its $50 million smart grid project off the ground, Kuennen said, noting that KEMA helped the utility with its grant application.

          If GWP doesn't get the grant, “it will slow us down considerably,” Kuennen noted.  “But we're hoping DOE wants shovel ready.  We are shovel ready!” GWP presents to DOE a “success story,” in part since it has worked hard on involving its customers in “customer-directed utility programs,” said Kuennen.  A good example is its program for energy-efficiency audits and retrofits for small businesses -- an initiative that has been “pretty much copied by most utilities in California,” including IOUs and munis, he added.  The California Municipal Utilities Assn, four years in a row won the innovation award for utilities of its size.

          DOE should appreciate that GWP shared its ideas and experience with other utilities at monthly meetings held by the Southern California Public Power Authority, he added.

          “The DOE money really, really helps,” said Kuennen.  “It gets you a much better system and gets you moved onto the smart grid faster.”