Friday, March 29, 2024

PUD selects route for transmission lines into Bavarian substation

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The Chelan County PUD has selected the route for a new transmission line into proposed new Bavarian substation, located at the intersection of North Road and Chumstick Hwy. 

Transmission lines bring the power into the substation, while the distribution lines spread the power out into the surrounding community. These high voltage lines are typically on poles, not underground. 

“We went through some stakeholder engagement with people that were interested in helping provide input on three different routes we had proposed. We met with them in August and September. In October, we got direction from the board to go ahead and move forward with alternative three, which stays mostly on Chelan County and PUD property. It’s also the shortest route,” Teka Sellers, PUD customer outreach specialist II. 

One of the most important aspects of the project was to have a redundant feed or looped transmission. There will be two feeds going into the substations. 

“If one of the substation were to go down, or we pick up a lot of load from the other substation, we would still have a feed going into the substation, if one of the transmission lines went down,” Sellers said. “Not all of our substations have looped transmission or a redundant feed like that. It was important we took the opportunity to do that here.”

One route will come out of the existing station, up the Chumstick Hwy. and into the new substation. The other line will tap off the existing substation and come into the new substation to create the loop. 

“We wanted to take the opportunity since we’re building this new substation to have looped transmission. That was really important to us to make sure we could create a loop. We knew one of the transmission lines would come out of the existing substation and into the new substation,” Sellers said. “We had some different options on how we were going to get that second line in there. We’ve presented three alternatives. The one the PUD preferred was also the one preferred by the stakeholder group as well.”

Now that a transmission line route has been chosen, Sellers said they will fold the design of the transmission line and the design of the substation into one project. As they move forward, they will be designing both things. There is a substation design stakeholder group, which has been asked to provide input. Sellers said they would get a first permit-level design done and share that with the stakeholders and get a little more input. Then, continue to move forward. 

“Maybe in the spring, we should have a permit-level design ready to submit to Chelan County to initiate the conditional use permitting process. Then, we’ll continue with design, permitting and engineering in 2018. Then, we expect substation and transmission line construction in 2019 and 2020,” she said. 

Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com.

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