The following is a transcript of the Oct. 14, 2024, episode of Public Power Now. Learn more about subscribing to Public Power Now at Publicpower.org/Podcasts. Some quotes may have been edited for clarity.
Paul Ciampoli
Welcome to the latest episode of Public Power Now. I'm Paul Ciampoli, APPA's News Director. Our guest on this episode is Janet Lonneker, Assistant General Manager for Electric Services at California public power utility Anaheim Public Utilities. Janet, thanks for joining us.
Janet Lonneker
Thanks, Paul. Glad to be here.
Paul Ciampoli
Janet, to get our conversation started, I want to give you the opportunity to provide an overview of your responsibilities as assistant general manager for electric services.
Janet Lonneker
Let me start with a little bit of background on Anaheim and the utility. APU is a municipal owned electric and water utility that serves residents and businesses within the city boundaries of Anaheim, which is approximately 50 square miles. It's the 10th largest city in California – with a population of 360,000. So as the assistant general manager of Electric Services, I manage the electric side of the utility, which is the electric system planning, substation and transmission and distribution engineering, system operations, who monitor the system 24/7 and can reroute power during outages. And I also oversee the electric field personnel like the line crews, troubleshooting, metering, testing and inspection. So basically, I oversee power delivery, whatever it takes to deliver power after the generator to the meter.
Paul Ciampoli
In terms of my preparation for this interview, one of the things that jumped out at me and -- correct me if I’m wrong -- but something APU gives a lot of attention to on its website is the utility’s program to place transmission lines underground. So what have been the challenges and benefits tied to this program and how has the program been funded?
Janet Lonneker
It's one of our prized programs, Paul. We've been undergrounding major roadways in Anaheim under our program since 1990, similar to the investor-owned utilities Rule 20 program. Projects are determined and prioritized by a five-person underground conversion subcommittee, which is made up of utility board members and our city's planning department. To date, we've undergrounded about 140 circuit miles of overhead lines in Anaheim and we also feature the first fully underground substation in the United States.
Paul Ciampoli
Interesting. Could you elaborate a little on that? The substation you mentioned?
Janet Lonneker
Absolutely. So back in 2006, our eastern portion of Anaheim, which is primarily hilly topography and Canyon areas and it's considered a higher fire threat zone -- We needed to build a substation near what is primarily residential areas and so of course nobody wants a substation in their backyard. And so we put our heads together, worked with the community to figure out how we could possibly build a substation greatly needed in the area for increasing growth, but make it so that it's functional for the residents in the area and that it's protected from wildfires. So it was determined through what's called a charrette, where the community gets involved along with our utility professionals and as well as our city leaders to determine that we should place this substation underground and so the substation...is a gas insulated substation, so it takes a little bit less footprint than a typical above ground substation. It is contained in concrete below ground and above that substation is a park that is used by the area residents there, so it's dual purpose and that's how we were able to build what we needed for reliability for the utility, but also address our community and our customers’ needs and make it a functional benefit for them in the area.
Paul Ciampoli
Are there any other ongoing or recently completed APU projects you'd like to highlight?
Janet Lonneker
We have so much going on here in Anaheim and I would typically talk about all the capital improvements we're making. We have a lot of growth happening with, of course, what's been in the news about Disneyland's expansion, about the Honda Center and the OC Vibe expansion. We have a big presence and entertainment venue here in Anaheim where we see about 20 million visitors annually that come to Anaheim to visit our public venues, our Anaheim Stadium, and we need to accommodate for all of that venue through capacity upgrades. So we're working extensively on preparing for that and also of course for preparing for the events that are going to take place in 2028 with the Olympics. So we're excited about that. A lot of construction in the streets, a lot of challenges, of course, with putting all of that underground that will add to, of course, our over 60% of our utility lines underground in Anaheim.
But aside from what we typically do, the capital improvements infrastructure for electric utility, I really want to highlight that the utility spends a lot of time in building relationships with our customers and our community. Our general manager, Dukku Lee, has built such an incredible relationship in this community where we have addressed homeless issues. We have addressed community needs, rebates, programs for conservation, for turf replacement, for wildfire abatement and mitigation and we really have taken the time to address the community needs and I think that's what's been so important about having a local owned utility is we have the local control and the ability to speak with our customers, meet with our customers and really hear from them what they need. And then, of course, we have conservation programs where we do home assessments to be able to help our residents identify their biggest energy users.
And we provide rebates from air conditioning rebates from whole house upgrades, insulation and also for wildfire mitigation, attic venting and irrigation rebates to help our residents really protect their homes and also to save money. Same for commercial. We have a number of rebates for helping them upgrade their equipment to more energy efficient equipment and standards and help them meet those energy efficiency requirements that they are mandated here in California. So it's just a way of assisting our customers to save money and give them the technical expertise and the network vendors to supply those type of upgrades to assist them in their projects.
Paul Ciampoli
As you know, unfortunately, the electric utility sector is continuing to face supply chain issues including for distribution transformers. I wanted to take this opportunity to ask you about this further and have you describe if you could the strategies the utility has adopted to meet supply chain challenges, whether it's for transformers or other essential electric infrastructure materials.
Janet Lonneker
It's been a major challenge for us, particularly in the last three years. Anaheim is a mid-size utility compared to investor-owned utilities, other neighboring utilities, and we serve 126,000 electric meters, which is about the 10th of the size of an investor-owned type utility. So on the supply chain side of things and the simple economics of supply and demand, we are a little bit lower on the supply chain priority list, meaning what we are competing against are first FEMA to address storm situations and all of these recent hurricanes that we have seen --devastating the infrastructure, devastating the people, the residences. Those need to be addressed first and I think everybody understands that, so manufacturers direct their infrastructure, direct their product towards rebuilding. Secondly, is the investor-owned -- simple scale, size of the utility. They are second in line for what are long lead items such as transformers, switches, cable -- all of these things which used to be about a 30-week window for delivery have now become at least one year to two years in lead time to receive this equipment.
So for example, we have some fairly simple distribution transformers that are used throughout neighborhoods to serve power to residences and we ordered these all the time. And typically we've been waiting about 23 weeks for these orders to keep up with the demand. We're now waiting 52 weeks and in some instances, we are now waiting up to two years and we're really struggling to balance the delivery of our equipment with the growth demand here in Anaheim. So some of the ways we've been mitigating that is we've been looking at increasing the number of manufacturers that we bid out our equipment to. So for instance, we would typically have a few domestic partners that we would bid out. It's all competitively bid, but we were seeing some of the same vendors bidding on our transformers, for example. Those vendors are no longer able to meet our needs and our delivery dates because they are being pulled in many directions and they themselves aren't receiving enough of the components from their vendors and their manufacturers. So again, extended lead times.
So we've gone out and we have had to increase our manufacturers to some overseas manufacturers. The overseas manufacturers are able to ship faster than our domestic partners are. I don't quite understand the reasoning for that. But that's an example of something we've had to do is actually go overseas to find some additional manufacturers to meet our need. Some other things we're doing is we're trying to partner with other utilities, economies of scale -- like I said, Anaheim is a medium size utility and there are plenty of smaller utilities, public owned utilities in the surrounding areas who have even less economies of scale than Anaheim does. So how can we bundle together to create a a larger order, more demand for a manufacturer to be able to put us higher on the priority list, so we are looking for ways to partner with other companies for other utilities in order to do that. Some of the other things we do is it's interesting to me that a lot of the utilities, even the ones surrounding Anaheim, we have very different systems.
And I think it all just kind of developed over time. So, for example, our system is very similar to Southern California Edison just in how it's configured and the voltages that we use. We have a neighboring utility, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which has a very different system, so our system we base on 12,000 volt distribution. That's the voltage we use to distribute the power throughout the city. And then of course, it's transformed down to something usable for residences and businesses. L.A. Water and Power uses a different voltage. Their voltage is 34,500 volts that they distribute throughout their system, so that's a whole different set of materials that they use.
So sharing of materials, bundling together, makes it a little difficult because we all have different systems, which is unusual to me. What we are trying to do though is trying to make sure that the equipment we order and those with similar systems that we try to consolidate and make it so that it's standardized, that we don't have any customized equipment that we're ordering that we would be one offs from other utilities such as Edison. So if Edison's ordering a certain type of transformer, it's in our best interest to also have the same standard so that we can then, of course, through economies of scale, have an order go through a manufacturer of similar nature. So those are some of the things we're trying to do, get rid of the customization of our equipment, make it more standard. We are trying to group together with other medium to smaller utilities so that we can increase our economies of scale and we are looking for overseas manufacturers to supplement with our domestic partners to supply equipment to us.
Paul Ciampoli
So for my last question, I want to turn to the topic of energy storage and as you know, APU recently entered into an energy storage agreement with Roadhouse Energy Storage LLC for the purchase of energy capacity, resource adequacy and associated attributes from a 300 MW battery energy storage system. So I wanted to give you the opportunity to tell our listeners about how the utility is going to leverage the storage system to benefit the utility and its customers.
Janet Lonneker
This is an exciting opportunity for us. It's a 300 MW battery storage project that we are the sole owners of the output of that battery storage project and that will put Anaheim Public Utilities on a pathway towards achieving a 60% renewable energy target by 2030, which is consistent with the greenhouse gas emissions reduction levels established by our California Air Resources Board.
So the battery storage is used to balance our renewable and our load profile and that is primarily what this project will enable us to do -- we have renewables in wind, solar, geothermal and this will be a way for us to store the energy when either prices are negative, where we are generating power or our partners are generating power that is negative pricing -- in other words, we would have to pay to offload the energy which is typically during the day when there is an abundance of solar being produced, well, that gives us the opportunity then to store that energy and then to use it when times of solar generation are lower, which is later in the evening about 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM at night.
So this helps our customers in that we are able to utilize better, more efficiently and more effectively the renewable energy portfolio that we do have, our power purchase agreements that we do have and enables us to spread out that usage of that renewable energy across a longer time frame during the day. And that's how I think we're going to be able to flatten out the renewables versus our load profile, which is very variable during the day and evening.
Paul Ciampoli
Janet, we would love to have you back on the podcast at some point in the future. And in particular, I'm sure we have other topics we could talk about, but I'd love to revisit the supply chain issues that you went over because I think that in particular was a really, really informative part of our interview today. So I just wanted to throw that out there as a possibility.
Janet Lonneker
Great. And I'd just like to say that APPA has been a great partner with us, as well as all of the public utilities in that they have really taken an action towards having the supply chain issue communicated upwards to the administration to say that we are behind renewables we are behind expanding electrification. We want those things, but to do that we have to have the materials to serve that electricity and deliver it. And so there needs to be a balance. There needs to be a partnership there for us to be on board with electrification. We need some assistance in helping us get the equipment and the supply chain fixed in any way possible.
Paul Ciampoli
Thank you so much, Janet. I really appreciate it and I'll be back in touch with you probably sometime next year to arrange a second interview.
Janet Lonneker
Sounds great. Thank you, Paul. I appreciate the opportunity.
Paul Ciampoli
Thanks for listening to this episode of Public Power Now, which is produced by Julio Guerrero, graphic and digital designer at APPA. I'm Paul Ciampoli and we'll be back next week with more from the world of public power.
