Riverside Transmission Reliability Project (RTRP)

The Riverside Transmission Reliability Project (RTRP) will provide the City of Riverside with a critical second power connection to the California electric grid. The City of Riverside is working with its partner, Southern California Edison, to establish the second power connection to the statewide power grid in order to meet the needs of additional power capacity and to serve existing and projected electrical demand in the city. This project will ensure Riverside’s hospitals, trauma centers, jails, fire stations, traffic signals, universities, schools, colleges, businesses and families have reliable energy should there be any type of natural disaster, accident, or any other unanticipated event.

Why is it important?

Currently, all of RPU's imported energy comes through a single power connection from Southern California Edison's (SCE) Vista Substation, located in the city of Grand Terrace. Through that connection, only a certain amount of energy, 557 megawatts (MW), can reach the city.

If the electrical needs of RPU customers exceed that amount of energy, there is not any way to bring additional power into Riverside, as there are no other outside connections. While over the past ten years RPU has built a number of power generation plants within the city that can help supply extra energy in time of peak demands and emergencies, they do not provide reliable, long-term solutions to the city's capacity shortage, nor will they be enough to meet current and projected energy load growth.

The RTRP would create a second connection to outside power lines, and a second substation, that would reduce dependence on a single substation and connection, increase the amount of energy RPU could import, and provide greater flexibility to expand our energy delivery system to meet Riverside's growing energy needs well into the future.