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FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | SEPTEMBER 2023 39 By Bruce Hammett Southern California Edison (SCE) owns the electrical lines connected to our Four Seasons homes. The city of Banning (BPUD) owns the lines connected to most of Banning, but they buy their electricity under contract from SCE and several other retailers including generation from many contracts. SCE owns or buys capacity from other local generators including nuclear, hydro, natural gas, geothermal, coal, wind, and solar plants, but SCE is also a customer to many national electrical suppliers as part of being interconnected with one-third of the nation's common grid. Similarly, SCE owns the power lines that feed us directly, but they buy space from national companies who own major power lines crisscrossing California and the nation, the common "Electrical Reservoir." New electricity from all sources is registered to the reservoir operator through a seller-owned kilowatt-hour (KWHR) meter and is credited to that seller. SCE purchases needed energy from the reservoir operator through another KWHR meter. This is like our method of residential purchase from SCE. In the SCE territory, renewable energy (RE) generators feeding the reservoir is diverse and international. From the Pacific to the Colorado river, there are separate commercial owners of approximately 38 wind farms, 35 solar farms, 25 battery storage facilities, five geothermal plants, 20 hydro plants, a nuclear plant, and several hundred thousand residential and commercial small solar systems adding to the mix who generate and sell power. The diversity of large owners is impressive and international. The world's largest owner of RE delivery companies is by far NextEra Energy of Juno FL followed at a distance by France's Avangrid Renewables. Both own several wind and solar facilities near Palm Springs, but NextEra also owns several So Cal area battery storage facilities. There are also roughly a dozen large domestic and international energy companies adding to the mix including Invenergy, EDF, AES, EDPR, Terra-Gen, sPower, First Solar, Shell, Chevron and LADWP. There are also several large natural gas, geothermal, and hydro-generation facilities feeding our local grid. Each company maintains a local repair and maintenance team and buys components and machinery from local, U.S., and international companies including WECS Electric Supply, founded in Banning in 1989. There are at least three Pass Area manufacturers enjoying some repair business, and roughly 2,000 employees directly involved in RE. All equipment is monitored over the internet, some locally, and most from as far away as Europe, Japan, and China. The future of new installations of RE continues to be explosive but since 1982, there have been over 30 wind and solar farms installed including some of the largest solar plants in the world between Indio and the Colorado river, and many of the wind farms have been retrofitted with completely new re-sized wind turbines. Currently in the Palm Springs wind-zone, nearly 10,000 wind turbines with blade lengths of 28 ft (rated 75KW) that have reached their life expectancy are being replaced by only 30 newer technologies with roughly 220 ft in blade length (rated 3400 KW). A big change is coming to the oceans of the coastal-Atlantic states where the wind is high, the ocean floor is shallow and the population is large. Behemoth wind turbines will stand 950 feet above the ocean surface with blade lengths of 370 feet delivering 15000 kW each. Offshore wind turbines in the Pacific will be coming with some with floating turbines due to the lack of low shelf capabilities in the Pacific coast. RE has a large foot hold in our local and national energy future and we at Four Seasons will continue to enjoy our involvement at homes, in our facilities, and in our high-point view to the east. Below are some websites to explore for more information. www.cleanpower.org (U.S. Renewable Energy Association website) www.nacleanenergy.com (industry magazine) https://us.vestas.com/en-us (Turbine Manufacturer Portland/ Denmark) ht t p s : / / w w w. e n e r g y. c a . gov / pro g r a m s - a n d - topi c s / topi c s / renewable-energy (State of CA Renewable Energy commission) https://atlas.eia.gov/apps/2fe12ffc62864b97b4c2825569fb2381/ explore (U.S. government website) www.wecsrenewables.com (favorite renewable energy vendor site) Our community activities team will be announcing a guided tour of the Palm Springs area energy complex sometime in October. Renewable Energy: The Owners

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