As you drive on Interstate 15 south of Corona, you’ll come across sprawling developments of new businesses, homes and neighborhoods that form the communities of El Cerrito, Temescal Valley and Alberhill, including the cities of Lake Elsinore and Perris. For longtime residents of southwestern Riverside County, seeing their communities grow into emerging cities is a source of pride — as well as a source of growing pains.

“You don’t realize how reliant you are on power and energy sources until the lights go out and the refrigerator stops running,” said Jannlee Watson, a Temescal Valley resident. Watson has lived in the region for 28 years and witnessed the steady population growth that characterized the past three decades. She recalls that it hasn’t always been a smooth progression.

Public works departments and utilities, including Southern California Edison, are building new infrastructure to keep up with the pace of growth, and that has sometimes meant gaps in service prolonged by the complex regulatory process. Filling those gaps has been a priority for SCE, which is why the company launched plans to enhance reliability for its growing southwestern Riverside County customer base in early 2007.

Historically, the area has been served by the Ivy Glen substation. When that substation was built, it received high-voltage electricity through one large set of power lines, and that was enough at the time for the sparsely populated area. Years later, when growth in the area meant more electric capacity was needed, SCE built the Fogarty substation, receiving power from that same source line. Both substations receiving service from the same source line meant that when that power line went down, both substations were unable to serve customers.

With the substations now serving about 50,000 customers, bringing in a second connection became critical. That second connection is called the Valley Ivy Glen subtransmission Line. With this second power source, customers will not lose power when one of the sources is interrupted.

“Maintaining reliability to these customers has required system upgrades for many years to prevent outages that would result from the loss of power from a single source line,” said Paul McCabe, senior advisor with SCE’s Asset Strategy & Planning Department. “The long-term value of our project is that customers’ lights in this area will go out far less frequently than in the past. Without question, it will make a noticeable difference.”

The system upgrade involved installing a second 115-kilovolt power line traversing the 26 miles from SCE’s Valley substation in Menifee that provides power to the Ivy Glen and Fogarty substations. The new connection was energized in June and has begun providing the reliable electricity that customers deserve.

“Other than scheduled outages, we haven’t had any other outages since the connection has been up and running,” said Watson. “The Temescal Valley community has waited for this project for about 15 years, and it’s exciting to see it’s now a reality.”

For more information regarding bringing power to Temescal Valley, check out the latest story on ENERGIZED, “Preventing a Power Squeeze for a Million Customers.”