Construction begins on Lodi plant that will serve as backup energy source

May 10—The City of Lodi announced Tuesday that Enchanted Rock, LLC began construction of a 48-megawatt power generating unit on May 8.

The facility will be located adjacent to the city's water treatment plant on Turner Road just west of Lodi Lake.

The power plant is scheduled to be operational by the end of the summer, the city said.

Motorists and pedestrians are being asked to use extreme caution while traveling near the construction area.

This project is being fully funded by the California Department of Water Resources as part of the state's Strategic Reliability Reserve Program — an effort to safeguard the state's energy system in the face of drought, wildfires, and heat waves that impacting its energy grid.

The facility would create anywhere between 20 and 48 megawatts of emergency power and be delivered directly into Lodi, rather than be transferred through a third-party system.

In addition, it will only be used in extreme peak-demand events to provide temporary power generation to stabilize and supplement existing grid-tied power supplies to avoid grid failures both statewide and locally, the city said.

Lodi Electric Utility staff will be installing the necessary electrical infrastructure to support these efforts — the cost of which will be fully reimbursed by DWR.

The facility is being built after the city experienced two straight days of lengthy power outages last September.

On the afternoon Sept. 6, the Northern California Power Agency, which supplies most of Lodi's energy, said its dispatch center was contacted by Cal ISO with an order a dispatch operator understood as a request to shed 46.02 MW of power to prevent widespread outages.

The dispatcher then contacted several cities, including Lodi, to temporarily turn off power to some customers in those communities.

Power was shut off for about 45 minutes in the neighborhoods of Park West, Lodi West, Harvest Crossing and Bridgetowne neighborhoods, affecting 1,372 residents

The very next night, residents were without power for several hours after an unexpected equipment failure at the city's industrial substation near Lodi and Guild avenues.

Lodi's energy is delivered through three PG&E sub-transmission lines, the city said, adding a set of protection relays on one of the lines failed that morning. Although Lodi Electric Utility replaced the relays, a PG&E technician was required to approve the repairs, the city said.

With one relay down, the city said it was required to shed power, and at 4:14 p.m. Wednesday, was ordered to shed 35MW within 15 minutes.

One-hour, rotating outages throughout the city began at 4:30 p.m. in order to not overload the two active relays and shut the entire energy system down, the city said.

Some residents lost power twice during the outage rotations.

At the peak of the curtailment, the city said about 8,700 customers were without power.

The project will also help mitigate power import constraints in Lodi during extreme weather events and local emergencies until upgrades are completed to Lodi's transmission inter-tie with PG&E as part of the Northern San Joaquin 230 kV Transmission Project.

For more information about this project as well as California's Strategic Reliability Reserve Program, please visit www.water.ca.gov/What-We-Do/Power.