Riverside – The American Public Power Association (APPA) honored Riverside Public Utilities (RPU) with its highest award today, designating the California municipal utility as a Diamond Level Reliable Public Power Provider (RP3) at its 2014 Engineering & Technical Conference.

“Receiving this designation is a terrific testament to the hard work and dedication that our city, our board of public utilities, executive management and our entire energy delivery staff puts in each year for the benefit of our customer-owners,” said RPU General Manager Girish Balachandran.

Since 2006, the APPA’s RP3 program has recognized the nation’s top public power utilities in the Gold, Platinum, and Diamond categories that have demonstrated proficiency in four key disciplines: reliability, safety, workforce development, and system improvement.  RPU has been named a Platinum RP3 provider (which carries a two year designation) in 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2012.

Over the past decade, RPU has undertaken a variety of projects to increase its energy delivery system capacity and reliability including: system-wide power line tree trimming; constructing and procuring local generation sources; and upgrading its sub transmission systems.

“It is this type of dedication to improving and maintaining our infrastructure that has led us to this wonderful recognition today,” said RPU Deputy GM and COO Steve Badgett, who has also served as the head of the utility’s energy delivery division and was instrumental in promoting projects, personnel, and system improvements that helped RPU to reach new levels of reliability.

“Providing safe and reliable services for our customer owners is our mission,” Badgett said. “This designation by the APPA affirms that we are living up to the high quality standards of service we set forth to supply, while also ensuring system reliability for years to come.”

RPU is one of only 29 public power utilities among the 2,000 APPA members nationwide to ever receive the RP3 Diamond designation (which is good for three years); one of only two California public utilities to reach the prestigious level; and is the only large category utility in the state to receive the honor.

Balachandran and Badgett will further discuss the RP3 Diamond designation tonight on Riverside Public Utilities’ weekly radio program the Green Power Report at 6:30 p.m. (Pacific) on AM 590 The Answer.

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