? Municipal Owned Generating or Distribution Systems

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Joethemechanic

Joethemechanic

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Hazleton Pa
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Electro-Mechanical Technician. Industrial machinery
Are there many still in existence?

How about small municipal gen and dist systems that are not connected to the grid?

Is all this a thing of the distant past?
 
There are at least five in Los Angeles county alone. All are interconnected though.

Edit add: Cities of Los Angeles, Pasadena, Burbank, Glendale, Vernon off the top of my head. There may be more; these are the ones I've worked with in the past. All generate/distribute.
 
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In my area there are many municipal power companies but none that I know of generate power, they just buy it and distribute it. Often for lower prices and better service than the big guys.
 
One of the colleges in downtown Atlanta has their own generating and distribution facilities, a couple of suburban cites around Atlanta also have their own plants, one which is a methane gas powered plant. Georgia Tech has their own nuclear reactor, but I don't know if they actually power anything from it.
 
There are many municipal power systems around here. Some have generation but it is normally used for demand purposes as well as back up. They purchase power in big chunks and if they don't use it it is just lost, but if they use too much they are penalized. Having their own generation is used to balance things especially during peak demand periods so they don't pay too much for their power.
 
hillbilly1 said:
One of the colleges in downtown Atlanta has their own generating and distribution facilities, a couple of suburban cites around Atlanta also have their own plants, one which is a methane gas powered plant. Georgia Tech has their own nuclear reactor, but I don't know if they actually power anything from it.
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Temple University built a large peak shaving plant here in Philly about 20 years ago. It was all 3500 Series Caterpillar power. At the time it was the largest reciprocating (piston engine) electrical generating installation in North America.
 
Washington State has many Public Utility Districts that are city owned: Seattle City Light and Tacoma Power are the largest with their own generation, transmission and distribtution. There are many small and county size PUD's. Grant County PUD and Chelan County PUD have dams on the Columbia and very cheap power.

All PUD's have access to power from the Federal dams on the Columbia. Transmission is by BPA. Some counties are looking at taking over the power system from the private utility and going the PUD route.

City of Spokane has a 17.7 MW power system with a hydro-electric dam on the Spokane River to power the city water pumps that pull water from an underground river. Excess generation is sold to the local utility.

But none of the major PUD's are isolated from the grid. Even the old isolated diesel generator system in Elk City, Idaho is now on the grid, but via a long line. (My uncle used to maintain the Cat engine and was under a lot of pressure during summer outages to power back up ASAP before the deer and elk meat in the residents' freezers spoiled).

There is one isolated system. Chelan PUD's system for the village of Stehekin on the edge of North Cascades National Park at the north end of Lake Chelan has a small hydro unit and a couple of diesel generators. Even before fuel prices went up the PUD lost $50K/year on that system. No roads, rail or power lines into the area.
 
I really thought the municipal power providers all got gobbled up in the past 30 years by the big players. I'm kinda glad to see that it still exists in some places.
 
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