3 years in the making, the new Hooker Substation uses the latest technology to provide reliability 40 years into the future.
It took 3 years of planning, engineering, and construction, but when the new Hooker Substation came online recently it brought 1 of the most remote areas served by Graham County Electric Cooperative (GCEC) “into the 21st century.”
“It’s exciting,” said Joshua Bryce, GCEC project manager and electrical engineer.
The Hooker Substation is located in a remote rural area on the southwest side of the Graham Mountains, feeding power to a line that extends for miles to the northwest, circling the huge mountain range and connecting back to the GCEC grid system west of Pima. The new substation was brought online on January 30th.
“Some of the transformers in the original substation are 64 years old, typically in the utility industry we look at a 40-year life cycle for transformers, so they’re way passed their useful life.
“Because this system is isolated over here on the side of the mountain nothing from this substation connects to any other source of power, so if something happens here, everything in this network is out,” said Bryce.
“So, that means it’s got to be really reliable, it’s got to work,” Bryce said.
The capacity of the original substation was 5 megawatts, the new one is double that at 10 megawatts, which means the current load of between 1.5 MW and 2 MW can be handled with plenty of room for increased demand.
“For example, a lot of the irrigation pumps in this area are run on natural gas and that happened because the natural gas 20 years ago was very stable.”
“That’s not the case now so (farmers and ranchers) are looking at alternatives; do they come back to electric and, if so, we want to be ready because that would add substantially the load,” said Bryce.
The new substation uses circuit breakers to handle faults instead of the system of fuses used in the original substation.
“Fuses are very expensive now and they’re outdated, so with the new sub we have circuit breakers that are remotely monitored, so if there’s a fault it opens the circuit breaker and operations can look at it remotely, deal with the issue, and close the breaker remotely, so we don’t have to spend a lot of time and money sending a crew to replace outdated fuses,” said Bryce.
A major advancement is the placement of a spare transformer next to the new one.
“We have this transformer as a spare, with the same capacity, so if this 1 goes out we can switch over; It would take 2 days to put this spare transformer in place and get it connected and energized and delivering power, as opposed to having to replace the transformer which could take on the order of 2 years,” Bryce said.
And there’s more.
The original substation had outdated components called “bus work” that would close or open circuits in case of a fault, or interruption in power. The old bus work meant a power outage was inevitable until crews fixed the problem.
The new bus work eliminates that issue and adds redundancy.
“With the new bus work there is what’s called a “transfer bus” where we can put both circuits in the substation to 1 recloser (a breaker) and be able to work on the bus and still maintain and deliver power” in spite of a fault, said Bryce.
“With the old system we had a decent idea on metering for the entire substation, what came in and went out, but not with the individual circuits.
“Now it’s remotely monitored and controlled, and we have (real-time) metering data for both circuits, which helps with troubleshooting and planning, and when we’ve got issues out on the lines we can see those early” and take care of them before they cause a problem, said Bryce.
Line supervisor Trent Bingham points out none of this would have been possible without “a great crew, and a safe crew.”
“Our focus is on safety and teamwork and our line crew is a great group of guys who do just that,” said Bingham.
When the GCEC line crew began the “cutover,” or process of disconnecting power lines from the old substation and connecting them to the new one, it took less than 2 hours to complete – because each member of the crew knew ahead of time exactly what they had to accomplish.
“That’s where they excel; you sat through our “tailgate” (a briefing that is held before the start of any project) and can see where we went through the whole system, and you would also notice we communicate with each other, down to the smallest detail,” said Bingham.
“Teamwork starts with communication which ties back into teamwork; if something goes wrong it’s either a lack of communication or you don’t have a plan or a process in place,” said Bingham.
Above everything else, above concerns about production or how quickly a job can be done, is the “culture of safety.”
“Safety is the number 1 priority.
“It starts from the top down, and when Phil (Cook) took over, that was the first priority he set,” said Bingham.
“It wasn’t always that way; in this industry, it used to be you had a lot of guys retire without fingers, or worse, because of concerns over production, but about 5 years ago we started changing the mindset.
“If you focus on safety – which we do – production just follows; you have fewer accidents, hopefully, no accidents, and you have everyone going home to their families at the end of the day,” Bingham said.
Lineman Shane Howard said it’s a “great crew where everyone watches out for each other.”
“The ‘circle of safety’ is great because we’re always thinking about safety first, and we’re efficient as a team,” Howard said.
“Lately, we’ve been hitting harder than ever on safety and it’s kept our eyes open and kept us alert. We’ve been getting the tools to make it easier, like having the (electronic) tablets for our tailgate briefings where everyone signs off that they’re present and understand, it just helps,” Howard said.
Bryce said the new substation is actually a view into the future.
“It’s always exciting to make something like this come together,” said Bryce.