BC Hydro Mount Pleasant Substation | u/c

[golog]

Hydro plans $200 million in upgrades for Vancouver (source: Vancouver Sun article)

BC Hydro’s city system is certainly old. The Mount Pleasant-King Edward area is served through three aging substations, the Murrin, Sperling and Mainwaring, all of which are more than 50 years old, with the Murrin substation at Main and Union streets being the city’s first “modern” substation built in 1945. It feeds into both the downtown core and to the south side of False Creek.

The Murrin substation is now at capacity and in need of repair. The main lines feeding from it to Mainwaring have deteriorated to the point they are no longer being factored into the city’s electrical grid, Reghelini said. The plan is to decrease Murrin’s role from being a main substation to a neighbourhood utility once the new system is in place.

The new transmission line, which received approval from the B.C. Utilities Commission in June, will have the capacity to power an estimated 30,000 homes.

It will run in a big loop from the Sperling substation at King Edward and Arbutus eastward along 13th Avenue to City Hall, and down to the Mount Pleasant station before curving back and heading under False Creek to link up with the relatively new Cathedral Square substation on Seymour at Dunsmuir.

...
For upwards of six months city streets along the route will be dug up in order to install 28 manholes and duct boxes, and to lay the new line up to 2.5 metres deep. It will take up to 20 weeks for each block, Reghelini said.

Hydro is also using a horizontal drilling machine to plow a new $16-million access tunnel under False Creek between David Lam Park and Laurel Street. That will require a drilling machine installed at the park for upwards of five months.

Overall, laying the new line will cost $64 million.

The new three-storey substation will be built at Sixth Avenue and Alberta Street for $65 million. One storey will be underground and it is being built oversized for future capacity.

I wouldn't call it an upgrade personally, more of an expansion that bolsters system resiliency. With the new developments in that part of the city, so to does the electricity demand. Building a new substation there will not only allow room for demand growth, but it will decrease the area affected by a blackout at any one substation and reduce the load on the neighbouring substations.

and now for the token Not Under My Feet brigade

The project is not without its detractors. A group calling itself Protest New Powerlines objected, arguing the line’s magnetic radiation would pose a health risk to residents. They appealed to the BCUC to bury the line an extra metre deep. Hydro objected, citing costs and insisting scientific studies showed no evidence of health risks from electromagnetic radiation, especially at the depth the line would be buried.

The BCUC agreed and dismissed the objectors’ concerns. Attempts to contact the group for comment were unsuccessful.

If anyone is interested, all kinds of reports filed by Hydro to the Utilities Commission are available at the central library branch. They include cool maps of historic creeks and soil types throughout Vancouver.

[twoNeurons]

You know what's interesting. My wife's always saying she can't believe that the power goes out so often here.

She says that it's only during really strong typhoons that the power goes out in Japan ( in cities, at least ). I don't know if that's perception or reality, just interesting.

[golog]

BC Hydro Transmission, Vancouver City Central Transmission (VCCT) Project with construction updates
Dec 08 Open House PDF
Feb 09 Open House PDF

David Lam park will be used for about the next year... it's barely been reopened since the Olympics

[officedweller]

Thanks for posting.
It looks like it'll tie up most of the playing field at David Lam Park.

[jlousa]

Too late now, but I wonder if they could've piggybacked on the Canada Line construction and run the power thru the tunnel then. Seems like there many projects that could've gained from synergy but it rarely seems to happen.

[delboy]

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

You know what's interesting. My wife's always saying she can't believe that the power goes out so often here.

She says that it's only during really strong typhoons that the power goes out in Japan ( in cities, at least ). I don't know if that's perception or reality, just interesting.

actually I have noticted that too and traffic lights. Never once saw traffic lights out in the UK.

[whatnext]

Given that Hydro hasn't done any upgrading in 30 years, and the huge population increase in the area in the meantime, they must have really overbuilt in the 70's!

[golog]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Given that Hydro hasn't done any upgrading in 30 years, and the huge population increase in the area in the meantime, they must have really overbuilt in the 70's!

That's not quite accurate.

On the supply side, referring to the Cathedral Square substation because it is the somewhat renowned for being an underground substation with a park at ground level in an urban area:

• Cathedral Square substation was opened in 1984 picture of construction(source)
• A new 230kV cable was laid to Cathedral square in 2003, the first underground line since 1982 (source)
• Third transformer installed at Cathedral Square in 2009 (source)
  fun fact:

  When the substation was completed in 1984, an urban park was built atop of the upper slab of concrete and air vents set up that were intended to heat tropical plants beneath large, arched canopies – a utopian dream that was never realized.

So they always leave room to add more transformers or circuits, electricity demand is fairly predictable growing a little bit every year. Furthermore in some of the older substations that have been built out, retired equipment can be replaced to leave greater total capacity. I'm sure there has been a lot of ongoing work, just no single projects of this magnitude in the area.

On the demand side:
Well the downtown area has changed a lot in the intervening years. There used to be a lot of factories/mills that would have had huge demand compared to some of the office/residential that replaced them. Also offsetting any population/building increase could be improved efficiency or conservation (it used to be the norm to leave lights on at night in empty offices to show off the building, high efficiency computer controlled HVAC systems weren't around, ...) -- although that may be offset by increased numbers of gizmos and the use thereof.

~30 years between major projects in an area sounds desirable to me. Probably strikes a good balance between opportunity costs of the money, minimizing unknowns about the size/location of future demand, and the cost savings of building fewer larger projects.

[SpongeG]

they just ran a story on global - some good video of the project

[Architype]

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

You know what's interesting. My wife's always saying she can't believe that the power goes out so often here.

She says that it's only during really strong typhoons that the power goes out in Japan ( in cities, at least ). I don't know if that's perception or reality, just interesting.

It's strange that the power outages are frequent in the downtown core area.

I live on the Mt. Pleasant side, and it seems there hasn't been an outage here in years.

[Millennium2002]

In the overall sense power has been quite reliable over the past decade or two... although there has been a few highly-publicized blips (recent Vancouver South problems and the Downtown transformer explosions and failures from a few years back). I wonder if she's just thinking about those more than anything else... which is understandable, since almost everyone who lives here (including me) nowadays expect the power to be always on and ready for our everything we do.

[hollywoodnorth]

Originally Posted by SpongeG

they just ran a story on global - some good video of the project

http://www.globaltvbc.com/video/inde...ANTWhQM4MsSzr_

cool thanks!

[cabotp]

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

You know what's interesting. My wife's always saying she can't believe that the power goes out so often here.

She says that it's only during really strong typhoons that the power goes out in Japan ( in cities, at least ). I don't know if that's perception or reality, just interesting.

Which is why this project is needed.

My guess is this new sub station will provide a more redundant back up for the area. Thus helping to prevent more black and brownouts for the area.

You don't hear of many blackouts that happen in the City of Vancouver. Which is why when one or more do happen there is a major questioning going on by the public. That is why the blackouts that have happened recently were quite high profile.

Hydro does have a lot of redundancy for its system in Vancouver. Which helps to prevent a lot of black outs. While if you look at a place like eastern Langley or Maple Ridge. They get far more black outs because of a less redundant system.

So this upgrade is hydro realizing that there are problems that are starting to come up and its better to stop them now before it gets out of hand.

[cabotp]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Given that Hydro hasn't done any upgrading in 30 years, and the huge population increase in the area in the meantime, they must have really overbuilt in the 70's!

BC Hydro 30-40 years ago vastly over built the system that they had. In terms of both generating power and transmission. The Columbia river treaty was a major factor in this.

All the money that was spent by the government and BC Hydro at the time back in the 60's and 70's. Has been a major reason in why we haven't needed to really see any major upgrades. And also why we have had a cheap supply of power for so long.

Its too bad they can't over build the transportation system like they did hydro power.

[SpongeG]

• Video Link

[SpongeG]

• Video Link

• Video Link

[SpongeG]

global did a report on the 1km cable snaking its way - someone needs to go get some pics looks neat

this is a shorter report - longer report not online yet

http://www.globaltvbc.com/video/inde...o_g_7_WTuH5SSs

[jsbertram]

Originally Posted by SpongeG

global did a report on the 1km cable snaking its way - someone needs to go get some pics looks neat

this is a shorter report - longer report not online yet

http://www.globaltvbc.com/video/inde...o_g_7_WTuH5SSs

This had 6th Ave between Cambie and Granville closed yesterday, so all that traffic shifted over to Broadway. I suspect 6th is still closed today.

Can you say ClusterF*@^#%$k?
I heard from a friend it took 45 minutes to go from Granville to Cambie - this wasn't during rush hour.

Yesterday I saw someone cursing a blue streak that would've made a sailor blush, because she had to go from Laurel/Broadway all the way west to Hemlock to get north of the cables & then come back east to Laurel & 7th.

The N-S streets from Willow west to Hemlock (maybe Granville too?) are closed to traffic (except local businesses and residents) while the cables are travelling along 8th Ave.

Google maps shows a 1KM cable would run from Laurel to Granville. Lots of street closures this weekend.

Getting around Fairview slopes north of Broadway is impossible, since the cables are too big to go under or over -- walking or driving.

The pull under False Creek is supposed to be finished by Monday.


BTW: This is a sneak preview of how drivers won't cope with Broadway closures to build a surface streetcar line or a Cut 'n' Cover tunnel.

[hollywoodnorth]

thx for the link ... cool stuff

[jsbertram]

I noticed on my way by there tonight that Willow St appears to be open again, so I'm guessing that means 6th Ave and Charleson Rd are open again too, since the cables should now be stretched out along 8th Ave between Willow and Hemlock.