By Lynn SHER

The extended family of Lauren Grayson visited the Grayson Power Plant (GPP) on Tuesday, June 20 for a final tour of the facilities. Grayson was chief engineer and general manager of the plant that was his namesake. The family present on Tuesday included his son David Grayson and daughter Cynthia Pearson, grandson David Pearson and granddaughter Elisabeth Zahm and great-grandson and great-granddaughter Caden and Lauren Zahm. Mark Young, general manager of Glendale Water and Power (GWP), and John Escudero, plant superintendent, began the tour by saying a little about their personal histories.

Both had started their careers as apprentices in 1989, working their way up over the decades to their current titles. Young’s emotional connection to the GPP was obvious as he held back tears.

“I don’t like to have my history erased,” he said of his feelings regarding the plant’s closure. He explained how a couple of weeks ago a lunch was held for previously employed operators and mechanics. He said that many emotions surfaced when he thought about showing the family the GPP one last time.

Glendale has been receiving its power and water from the Grayson Power Plant since the 1940s, but the plant needs modernization. According to glendaleca.gov, “Much of [the GPP’s] existing infrastructure and equipment is due for replacement.”

It was proposed that the Grayson Repowering Project “would replace aged, unreliable, inefficient and high maintenance equipment at the Grayson Power Plant with a combination of energy storage and new, efficient, faster-starting and more environmentally responsible generation technologies.”

On the GWP website it states, “GWP is faced with the imminent retirement of its only local generation resource, the natural gas fired Grayson Power Plant at 800 Air Way in Glendale. GWP is extremely dependent on imported power over constrained electric transmission and must replace the retiring Grayson units with reliable local generation. The retirement of the Grayson Power Plant presents GWP with a unique opportunity to shift to cleaner, more efficient technology to power the City in the future.”

Explaining the transition to a repowering project, the website further states, “Glendale is heavily dependent upon imported power to serve its customers, and the transmission import capacity is less than the peak summer, so GWP needs to have a local source of power to back up the transmission imports and ensure reliable service. … The Grayson Power Plant is well past its useful life and needs to be repowered in order to meet the current and future energy needs of the City of Glendale. A repowering project would replace the aged, unreliable, inefficient and high maintenance equipment at the Grayson Power Plant with new, efficient, faster-starting and more environmentally-responsible generation technologies.” 

 To learn more about the Grayson Repowering Project, visit http://graysonrepowering.com/#project-overview.