Got Powerful Ideas? Pasadena Water and Power Department Wants to Hear From You, at Tonight’s Community Meeting

Pasadenans are being given the chance to contribute their ideas towards creating PWP’s Power Delivery Master Plan (PDMP), a detailed strategic plan focused on addressing critical challenges, and providing long-term strategies and future guidance for the utility to maintain a safe, reliable and cost-effective power delivery system throughout its service area.

Once completed, the PDMP will serve as general direction for PWP over a 20-year period and will be redeveloped every five years to ensure renewed focus and analysis.

The community’s inputs are critical to the development of the plan, PWP Marketing Manager Margie Otto said.

“An important component of this planning process is to seek input from the community,” Otto said. “Pasadena Water and Power’s electric team has developed a stakeholder group which consists of representatives knowledgeable about the power distribution system, as well as representatives from the business and residential community. As part of the input process of the Power Delivery Master Plan (PDMP), community meetings will be held on the west and east side of Pasadena.”

The first of these meetings takes place Thursday, November 7, at the Robinson Park Recreation Center, at 1081 N Fair Oaks Avenue in Pasadena, starting at 6 p.m.

During the meeting, PWP customers can participate by sharing ideas, concerns, and key considerations that the project team needs to address in terms of service reliability, safety, aesthetics, and costs, Otto added.

PWP said their customers are currently getting consistent reliable electric power, with the average customer experiencing one unplanned outage only every four years.

“The PDMP that is being developed will help to ensure we sustain these successes and explore how to enhance our distribution system to support arising technologies, like increased solar, energy storage and electric vehicles,” Otto said. “The master plan is a 20-year planning document with a number of specifics that are being proposed for the first five years. The plan is expected to be ready next summer.”

Between now and mid-2020, PWP will continue to hold stakeholders’ meetings and community input meetings will be held, PWP said.

The power utility said the PDMP will certainly include sections that will discuss the use of new technology, such as advanced metering and power-system automation. Other new systems may also include wireless or fiber communication systems, advanced metering Infrastructure, outage management system enhancements, and substation and distribution automation.

“PWP plans to continue providing superior power reliability but it requires investments and capital improvements,” Otto said. “We need continue to have replacement cycles for our assets that are realistic. Often the replacement will be with improved devices and installations that have less maintenance and more functionality.”

The PDMP will also address the future growth of Pasadena and the infrastructure necessary to support it, economic planning to ensure that PWP continues to be cost-effective and scalable, and repairs and modifications, both immediate and long-term.

To see more information on the PDMP process and how you can participate, visit www.PWPweb.com/PDMP.