REPORT TO COUNCIL
SUBJECT
Title
Action on Delegation of Authority to the City Manager to Issue a Purchase Order to Trayer Engineering Corporation (Trayer) for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition Controlled Vacuum Disconnect Interrupter Switchgear Associated with the Santa Clara University Distributed Energy Resources Project and Authorize the City Manager to Issue Future Purchases Orders to Trayer for Switchgear for Other Projects Up to a Maximum of $2,500,000 for Silicon Valley Power
Report
COUNCIL PILLAR
Deliver and Enhance Quality Efficient Services and Infrastructure
BACKGROUND
Switchgear is a collection of electrical devices like switches, fuses, and circuit breakers designed to control, protect, and isolate electrical equipment within a power system by regulating the flow of electricity, preventing overloads, and automatically interrupting power in case of faults, essentially safeguarding connected devices from damage and ensuring safe operation. The City's Electric Utility, Silicon Valley Power (SVP), uses switchgear for Distributed Energy Resources (DER) projects.
SVP is exploring projects such as renewable energy microgrids that use DERs to support critical city load and offset SVP peak loads. A DER system is a small-scale energy generation and storage technology that can be installed on-site to provide energy where it is needed. For example, microgrids currently being designed for Fire Station #2 and the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) will help protect the City's most critical sites from experiencing operational downtime, increase electrical infrastructure resiliency, and reduce diesel generator run-times. Additionally, the daily operations and standby power from microgrids will reduce criteria pollutants and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, in alignment with the City's Climate Action Plan (CAP).
In addition to projects supporting SVP and the City's needs, SVP performs a number of services that are charged directly to its customers. T...
Click here for full text