East Boulevard substation work to help complete loop

Workers are installing switches needed to mount two 69 kV breakers at the East Boulevard substation in order to complete the city’s fiber optic loop, City Utilities Director Bill Cefalu said Wednesday.
The work was funded last year by state capital outlay money.
Right now, the city’s new transformer and 138 kV breaker are in place at the capacitor substation, Cefalu said. All the material to install the equipment is on site, but the city is waiting for the concrete platform to be built, he said. “It’s going to take two weeks … before we can put anything on it,” he said.
In the meantime, city workers are working on the East Boulevard substation putting in the necessary switches, insulators, and lightning arrestors in order to mount two 69 kV breakers in that substation to help complete the loop, Cefalu said.
The city is trying to complete the project at the East Boulevard substation, which was approved and funded through state capital outlay money, he said. Cefalu plans for the breaker on one side of the substation to be installed this week and then start on the other side. After the East Boulevard substation is finished, work will begin at the capacitor substation.
At the East Boulevard substation, the breakers protect the power line. The switches being installed will open up if the city wants to isolate the breaker for maintenance, Cefalu said.
If everything goes according to plan, the capacitor substation should be complete and ready for the transformer to be hooked up by the end of January. Once work starts on the capacitor substation after Christmas, it will probably take two to three weeks to complete, Cefalu said.
“We don’t have any problems until April when our load starts increasing. So right now, we’re using the one transformer that we have to feed the city,” Cefalu said.
The new transformer can carry a load of up to 112 megawatts, and the city’s usage peaks at 47 megawatts, Cefalu said. “During the winter, when it (power usage) gets low, we’re going to use the old transformer, take this one offline and do maintenance on it.”
During the summer, the new transformer will be used to carry the city’s load, Cefalu said. “That way, you’re going to have one off all the time to where you can maintain it. That’s what most people do.”