Increasing our power reliability

Dear Colleagues,

UC Santa Cruz relies on the Pacific Gas and Electric Company for its regular day-to-day power needs. The main residential campus has an established backup system to provide continuity of power during outages to select buildings on campus. Our cogeneration plant, along with building generators, provide electricity to various facilities on campus when PG&E power becomes unavailable.

Over the past several years, we have experienced power outages at UC Santa Cruz for a number of reasons: unexpected outages when PG&E isn’t able to provide power to campus, planned outages so campus electricians can make necessary repairs and conduct maintenance, and voltage fluctuations in the power provided by PG&E.

Under California Public Utilities Commission requirements, PG&E is required to maintain voltage within ±2.5% of the delivery voltage. However, when momentary power fluctuations occur, our electrical infrastructure protective relays in some cases trip the campus offline to safeguard sensitive downstream equipment. This protective setting sometimes results in unexpected power outages, requiring technicians to restore service to the residential campus. These incidents appear to be occurring more frequently, disrupting our ability to support the campus mission.

This is a challenge that our campus needs to overcome, and we are actively scoping the contributing factors and determining what is needed to prevent power quality events from tripping our electrical system.

We understand the importance of reliable, uninterrupted power for the teaching, research, residential, dining, administrative, and pretty much every other activity that takes place on our campus. And therefore we understand the frustration, inconvenience, and in some cases damage that members of the campus community experience when we lose power. Beyond addressing the more frequent low-voltage situations we have been experiencing, we are committed to generally enhancing power reliability campuswide.

UC Santa Cruz is committed to implementing several initiatives to mitigate power interruptions. These efforts include:

• Collaboration with PG&E on short- and long-term electrical infrastructure projects designed to enhance power capacity, reliability, and redundancy;
• Establishment of a Power Resiliency Working Group tasked with identifying, categorizing, and developing strategies to improve resiliency across campus equipment, spaces, and systems;
• Installation of the Westside Research Park (WRP) Microgrid project, aimed at bolstering power resiliency at the Westside Research Park while also serving as a model for a similar system on the main residential campus;
• Conducting a due diligence review of the power protection relay system to ensure its design and settings align with best practices for maximizing protection and power reliability.

We expect to know more in summer 2025, and I’ll share an update later in the academic year.

Thanks for your patience as we work through these challenging infrastructure issues.

Sincerely,
Ed

Ed Reiskin
Vice Chancellor for Finance, Operations and Administration