California Food Processing Industry Wastewater Demonstration Project: Phase I Final Report

Wastewater treatment is an energy-intensive process and electricity demand is especially high during the utilities’ summer peak electricity demand periods. This makes wastewater treatment facilities prime candidates for demand response programs. However, wastewater treatment is often peripheral to food processing operations and its demand response opportunities have often been overlooked. Phase I of this wastewater demonstration project monitored wastewater energy and environmental data at Bell-Carter Foods, Inc., California's largest olive processing plant. For this monitoring activity the project team used Green Energy Management System (GEMS) automated enterprise energy management (EEM) technologies. This report presents results from data collected by GEMS from September 15, 2008 through November 30, 2008, during the olive harvest season. This project established and tested a methodology for (1) gathering baseline energy and environmental data at an industrial food-processing plant and (2) using the data to analyze energy efficiency, demand response, daily peak load management, and environmental management opportunities at the plant. The Phase I goals were to demonstrate the measurement and interrelationship of electricity demand, electricity usage, and water quality metrics and to estimate the associated CO₂ emissions.