REDLANDS, CALIFORNIA (January 17, 2022) – The City of Redlands, California recently completed upgrades to the wastewater treatment plant. Work entailed a focus on energy efficiency, and the project resulted in a total energy savings of more than 1.5 million kWh/yr plus $290,000 in incentives from the WISE program administered by Southern California Edison. Additionally, the City will save an estimated $152,000 per year in energy costs.
Lincus, Inc. provided energy consulting for the project, recommending upgrades to the treatment process to incorporate new energy-efficient systems. The project entailed decommissioning, removal and replacement of three multistage centrifugal blowers with three energy-efficient turbo blowers with variable speed drives as well as upgrades to the membrane treatment process.
“The improvement to our MBR facility considerably exceeded the city’s projection in water production, but most importantly, savings in energy requirements from the new turbo blowers and LEAPmbr technology,” said Fernando Mata, Redlands wastewater operations superintendent…Lincus’ expertise in providing benchmark analysis to aid in the energy savings has benefitted both operations and the City’s ratepayers by supporting the City in our upgrade project that has proven to be exceptionally cost-effective and successful.”
Energy savings are being achieved through improved blower controls, reduced air scouring requirements for the Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) process, which provided additional savings in operations and maintenance. The new blowers require less air to clean the membranes, providing savings through reduced energy consumption compared with the prior system. The heart of the energy-efficient MBR system is the controls, which are integrated with the new blowers and can modulate air flow based upon actual demands rather than the indiscriminate cleaning that had been previously happening. This new control methodology allows the system to operate at lower turndown flow rates for the scouring blowers by constantly monitoring blower operations resulting in unprecedented level of energy efficiency.
Lincus provided site visits, monitoring of existing operations and control systems for a range of parameters, recommending energy-efficient improvements, and project management assistance for proper operating results upon project completion.
Lincus began working with the City of Redlands in 2011 to develop a multi-phase approach to implement multiple energy efficiency projects at the City’s wastewater treatment plant. To date, this partnership has achieved more than 2.1 million kWh/yr in savings for the plant, resulting in annual energy cost savings of more than $200,000 for the plant as well as onetime program incentives in excess of $361,000.
Interested in learning how Lincus, Inc. can help your organization achieve greater energy savings? Contact Lincus today.