In December 2018, Control Engineering published a user report by Schneider Electric on the Reynolds groundwater desalination plant run by Sweetwater Authority in the south of San Diego County. Since 1999 the facility had used reverse osmosis to treat salty groundwater. An expansion finished in 2017 for USD 42 million added three more membrane trains, five new wells and about 37,900 m³/d, roughly a third of annual customer demand. Enterprise Automation renewed the controls, so operators could now start and adjust the plant remotely.
The report showed that brackish water desalination helped Southern California buy less outside water, and that automation mattered for such plants as much as additional membrane capacity.