Glendale staff detail grid‑preparedness plan, mobile substation and how they would weigh large data‑center requests

Ofse Bakhardarian, Glendale Water and Power’s electrical engineering manager, told the commission at its May 4 meeting that staff are pursuing a three‑part load‑planning approach—substation balancing, feeder transfers and transformer‑level monitoring—to keep the system reliable as electrification increases. He said SCADA and PI Vision tools flagged phase and transformer imbalances that crews correct with targeted outages and equipment upgrades.

Bakhardarian said crews are also pursuing a mobile substation procurement to give the utility flexible capacity during emergencies and planned upgrades. The unit being procured is a 15 MVA mobile substation that staff estimate could enter service by 2028; an engineering estimate supplied at the meeting put the project baseline at about $3.2 million and bid closing occurred the…