The East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) is a California utility that was formed over 100 years ago and serves water to 1.4 million customers in the San Francisco Bay area.
Their primary water supply comes from the Sierras and flows by gravity across the central valley to their water treatment plants in the East Bay. And that’s where they have over 400 facilities that they use to serve water to customers either at sea level up to about 1500 ft in elevation and all those facilities are connected by a very large piping network that’s 4200 miles long. Thanks to the leadership of the district’s board of directors, EBMUD have a goal to be carbon neutral by 2030. And since 2000, they’ve reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by approximately half through a combination of strategies such as generating hydro electricity, solar, and bio gas. This project offers EBMUD another strategy to evaluate their portfolio to becoming carbon neutral.
The HydroXS energy recovery system is a micro hydro turbine coupled with a control valve that takes the excess pressure in a municipal water system and converts it into clean renewable energy.
A HydroXS basically replaces a pressure reducing valve that EBMUD have on site. It allows them to capture the energy that would normally have been burned off as friction and allows them to reduce the pressure in an area that is below here. Having the opportunity to capture energy that they are normally losing is a great opportunity. It allows EBMUD to be more efficient with their operation as opposed to the way they used to do things 50, 60, or 70 years ago.
“This HydroXS system has a lot of data tied to it and a lot of that data, we want to be able to monitor and measure and that is all monitored by our operators in our control room. They’re looking at upstream pressure, downstream pressure and for the HydroXS, they’re looking at the power that’s being generated,” said Damom Hom, Supritendent of Water Treatment, Distribution and Quality, East Bay Municipal Utility District.
“This project touches on each of the three components of the triple bottom line. So, when we generate electricity and offset a portion of our operational costs, that helps keep the rates low for our customers. In addition, when we reduce our greenhouse gasses, that has benefits for our service area as well as beyond. And then one of the unexpected benefits from the project has been that the Inpipe Energy system is quieter than our traditional facility so that may provide quality of life improvements for our neighbors.
This is the first installation of the InPipe Energy technology in California. When we are able to work with companies early on in the product development stage, we’re able to develop the product so that they better meet our utilities needs as well as utilities globally,” said Casey Leblanc, Senior Civil Engineer, East Bay Municipal Utility District.
At Inpipe Energy we see East Bay mud at the forefront of innovation for water technologies and we found a really good relationship working with their engineering team, working with their operators understanding their critical features.
We’re really excited about the opportunity to use water to solve the climate crisis. Wherever there’s hydro electricity, you’ll find the lowest cost sources of energy. We’re doing hydro electricity, only it’s in a pressurized water pipeline. There’s no environmental impact. It’s a predictable, consistent, reliable source of low-cost electricity.
For more information, please contact InPipe Energy today. Ask about the free Energy and Carbon reduction assessment.