
Improving Reliability at Water Treatment
Built in the 1950s, our Water Treatment Plant cleans an average of 13-14 million gallons of drinking water per day. As a utility, we constantly look for ways to improve services and create redundancies in our processes. Doing so ensures our essential services are always available no matter the circumstance.
The first step in cleaning our drinking water uses high-powered electric pumps to bring water from Lake Michigan into our plant. This past year, our Water Treatment Plant installed two new 550kW natural gas generators to provide supplemental and back-up power for these critical pumps.

The Need
Holland BPW operates three different plants to provide electricity, water reclamation for wastewater and water treatment for drinking water. Of our plants, the Water Treatment Plant is our only facility that does not receive electricity directly from Holland BPW. As such, the Water Treatment Plant sometimes experiences power outages outside of our control to restore. Having natural gas-powered generators as an emergency power supply ensures our critical water services remain available in case of a power outage.
Cost Savings
These natural gas-powered generators not only serve as emergency back-up, but they also run during specific times to mitigate our power costs at the plant. The Water Treatment Plant’s electricity is charged on a peak rate schedule. This schedule makes it more costly to operate at certain times of day. These peak rates often occur at times when the community’s need for water is highest – particularly in the summer when water demand soars as residents and businesses water their lawns.
During off-peak times, we pump as much water as possible to help save on electricity costs. This typically involves pumping water at night for future use. These natural gas generators can also reduce costs when we must pump during peak rate hours. Allowing the natural gas-powered generators to power the pumps and bear some of the load of higher summer demand reduces our electricity use and costs.
All this work ultimately protects our customer water rates. The better we can control our costs, the better we can protect affordability and efficiency for our customers.
