For decades, what’s now known as southwestern Riverside County was primarily hidden in the shadows of the rapidly expanding Los Angeles and Orange counties. Generations of Native American tribes and farmers, then miners and railroad workers, pushed the region’s population to 139,000 by 1992.

Three decades later, the nearly 600 square miles of rolling hills and valleys are now home to populous master-planned communities, the upscale Pechanga Resort and Casino, wineries, a thriving business community and nearly a million people. The region’s population, which includes the cities of Temecula, Murrieta, Lake Elsinore, Perris, Wildomar, Menifee and unincorporated county areas, has almost doubled every decade since the early ’90s.

That growth has accelerated the need for continued reliable electric power. Enter Southern California Edison’s Alberhill System Project.

“The Alberhill project is critical for Southern California Edison to satisfy the electricity demand and reliability needs from all neighboring communities,” said Paul McCabe, senior advisor with SCE’s Asset Strategy & Planning group. “It will support continued population growth in the area, improve reliability, and provide important resiliency against threats such as climate change, wildfires and earthquakes and ensure reliable power delivery for decades.”

Today, all power to the area flows through the Valley substation, the largest in SCE’s service area. It’s part of a system that includes smaller substations and power lines that operate in isolation from the rest of SCE’s system, a configuration that has become untenable because of the region’s growth.

SCE plans to build a new substation with two transmission lines providing power, install three miles of new subtransmission power lines and upgrade about 18 miles of subtransmission power lines. The substation will be built in the Temescal Valley and will supply additional power to the region from the transmission grid, significantly boosting capacity, enhancing reliability during unplanned outages and enabling greater flexibility for system maintenance.

“Since 2017, there have been instances where the Valley substation was operating at near-maximum capacity that required temporary mitigation efforts to avoid interruptions of service, resulting in an unacceptably high risk to our customers,” McCabe said. “It’s urgent that we receive the green light to complete the Alberhill System Project as soon as possible.”

“For our business to continue to grow, we need a reliable source of power,” said Danny Long, director of development at the Rancon Group. “It’s far too risky to invest in expansion unless we know there will be reliable power well into the future.”

A nearby example of SCE’s efforts to provide reliable power to customers is the Valley-Ivyglen Subtransmission Line Project. The multi-year, $200 million project to add a second subtransmission line to the Ivyglen substation was completed on schedule in June, just in time to ensure greater reliability for Lake Elsinore and Temescal Valley this summer.

The growth in electrical demand is driven by the ongoing trend toward transportation and building electrification that’s needed to help California meet its greenhouse gas emission reduction goals. Pathway 2045, SCE’s road map to carbon neutrality, envisions that 20 million electric vehicles will be on California roads by 2045 and that 70% of the state’s buildings will use electricity for space and water heating, resulting in 90% fewer GHG emissions and increasing the total electrical load by about 15%.

Following SCE’s application to the California Public Utilities Commission in 2009 to approve the Alberhill System Project, the CPUC undertook an environmental analysis and issued its Final Environmental Impact Report in 2017. The next year, the CPUC directed SCE to supplement its application with additional analyses and an assessment of additional alternatives, and a decision on a solution has been placed on hold while the CPUC reviews those alternatives.

“A key solution to the long-term needs of the county is timely approval from the California Public Utilities Commission of SCE’s Alberhill System Project. Our proposal will add much-needed bandwidth on the grid that will help power southwestern Riverside County,” said Erik Takayesu, SCE senior vice president of Asset Strategy & Planning. “We need more and wider ‘roads’ for electrons to flow within the region.”

After the CPUC has completed its review, a final decision will be issued on the Alberhill System Project. Until then, SCE is unable to provide an accurate anticipated operating date.

Additional information for the project can be found at the following CPUC website: Alberhill System Project.