With local power comes local curiosity as Glendale residents tour GWP
On Thursday, Glendale residents attended open-house tours of Glendale Water & Power’s utility operations center, a free exploration of the public works that keep the city running.
“It’s a chance to give the community a look at the utilities that they own — being that it’s a public utility,” said Orlando Monahan, instrument and controls supervisor at the utility and tour guide for the day. “For the power plant, it gives them an inside look at power-generation capabilities of the plant. It gives them a hands-on approach for them to see what we do.”
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The event featured booths and displays, each designed to teach residents a little about different types of electric and water operations and services.
The two tours of the plant and facilities attracted all types of visitors, from the curious resident who may or may not have a technical background, to those who were once involved in public works.
Housed in the facilities were behemoth power-generating machines of the past and more modern versions that took up a considerably smaller footprint. Both manage to still work in tandem and will do so until future updates, according to Monahan.
“A lot of the stuff that the older units contain run on air and pneumatics. Mostly now, everything is electronic, so everything gets scaled down a lot more with today’s technology,” Monahan told a tour group. “In a modernized facility, you won’t see many dials, just computers.”
Before the tour started, power plant superintendent John Escudero reminded those in attendance just how important it is that Glendale house its own facilities.
“Glendale is very fortunate to have their very own facility and power plant. We don’t have to rely on anybody for big disasters — fires, earthquakes and so forth,” Escudero said. “In other words, we could separate from Los Angeles Department of Water and Power — and anyone else we usually buy from — and provide power for our own citizens.”
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Jeff Landa, jeff.landa@latimes.com
Twitter: @JeffLanda
