Ward Delivery Substation
Capital and Western invest $7 million in community
 |
|
The Ward Delivery Substation, north of Bismarck. |
To plan for city growth and provide more capacity to member-owners, Capital Electric Cooperative recently energized the Ward Delivery Substation north of Bismarck. The hefty investment from start to finish totals approximately $7 million dollars, and will be jointly paid for by the co-op and the Western Area Power Administration (Western).
The substation will provide Capital Electric with 100 megawatts of capacity, which means the new service can power about 20,000 new homes.
This investment provides additional capacity for new members while putting money back into the community, says Doug Mork, member services director for the cooperative.
“We evaluated our load flows, growth requirements and long-range designs for our distribution system. The addition of the Ward Delivery Substation is the result of careful planning for future load for the next 10 to 20 years. By doing this, we created a long-range plan to provide future reliability and capacity for our members,” he says.
Capital Electric currently operates nine distribution substations in the Bismarck area including Lincoln, North Bismarck, East Bismarck, Riverview, Ward, South Washington, Grandview Pines, Horizon and Circle K. The new Ward Delivery Substation will help provide additional capacity to all the distribution substations.
“Our contractual capacity at existing transmission delivery points is becoming used up during peak periods, so we had to add more into our system,” he says. “Obviously, we are planning for the future.”
The plan to add another substation began more than 10 years ago as the cooperative’s load steadily grew. Within the past five years, Capital Electric engineers, managers and its board of directors began looking for property. Once land was purchased, the co-op hired consults to conduct detailed environmental and archeological studies. Construction on the Ward Delivery Substation started a year and a half ago.
With the future in mind, the new substation was designed to double its capacity using the same facility.
 |
|
The control center of the Ward Delivery Substation, shared by Capital Electric and Western Area Power Administration. |
Mork says the bottom line is that the cooperative has made this significant investment to benefit its members, the community and the future.
“This is a big investment. Over the past 10 years, our plan was to provide capacity to the areas we would serve as the city grew. We’ve been unique in our efforts to make this type of investment.
“We’re proud of the quality and reliable service we consistently provide to our members. We believe the addition of the Ward Delivery Substation shows our commitment to this community.”
What is a substation and how does it work?
A substation is a facility that steps down voltage from the power plant to the meter at your house. If you are a member of Capital Electric, your electricity travels from a Basin Electric power plant through a 230,000-volt transmission line (230 kv), owned by Western Area Power Administration. The electricity reaches a substation like Ward Delivery, where it is stepped down to 115,000 volts (115 kv). It then travels the Capital Electric transmission loop on subtransmission lines, feeding four substations in central, east and north Bismarck. Those four substations then step down the voltage to 7,200 volts, which travels both on overhead and underground distribution lines to a transformer outside your home. That transformer steps down the voltage for a third and final time to 240 volts. It is then fed into your home’s distribution panel or meter, and you have electricity with a flip of the switch!
How does the Ward Delivery substation work with existing facilities?
Capital Electric Cooperative operates certain substations around its service territory called delivery points. These points in northwest, north and east Bismarck receive wholesale power from the co-op’s suppliers, which include Western, Basin Electric Power Cooperative and Central Power. The Ward Delivery Substation became the fourth delivery point, adding 100 megawatts of capacity.
“Ward Delivery will approximately double our existing delivery wholesale capacity,” says Mork. “This substation is designed to be doubled again when the need is there.”
The Ward Delivery Substation may help ease high costs of fuel
Capital Electric members are feverishly adding electric heat to their homes to counteract the extreme high price of natural gas and propane, says Mork. He believes the added capacity provided by the Ward Delivery Substation may help ease rising heating costs, thanks to the cooperative’s off-peak heat rates.
By using newer technology such as a groundsource heat pump, members may be able to heat their homes for less than half the cost of the high peaks of gas last winter, says Mork.
“Our highest load is in the summer, but that could change in the future as more and more electric heat is brought on, replacing gas. The ideal scenario would be to have summer and winter peaks mirror each other. That way, our cooperative can get the most benefit from our investments in capacity to serve our members.
“Our existing heat rates are extremely favorable to our members and much more stable than gas prices can ever be. This is because cooperatives have bought and paid for capacity at the power plant over the years. We are working with available generation capacity built with 1980s dollars, thus giving us the ability to plan for the future and maintain stable rates.
“All of this was considered when planning for this new substation: generation capacity, reliability and stability. That’s what it takes to make a major investment such as this,” he says.
Total investment
Capital Electric Cooperative jointly invested $7 million dollars with Western to develop the Ward Delivery Substation – in an effort to provide future reliability and service to its member-owners.
“Including our partnership with Western, Capital Electric has invested approximately $13 million dollars to serve our members over the last 10 years. This money has been carefully allocated and spent to provide future reliability and capacity to our members in the Bismarck area,” says Mork.