How Do Electric Substations Work?
The electricity grid is not merely a series of wires that string from the power plant through power lines down to your house. But that’s not how the electrical grid works. It needs many working parts, and one of the most important to these is the substation.
The general layout of the substation consists of power lines, or conductors, which connect to a series of equipment before that power from the plant goes out to the power grid. A substation is very often a hub or an intersection of many different incoming power lines, creating redundancies in case any one of the power sources goes down.
Because of problems that can occur in such a complex piece of engineering as a substation, there are switches built into the substation to isolate problems, prevent it from overloading, and switch from one power source to another. But simply turning off high voltage conductors isn’t as easy as flipping a lightswitch. In extreme circumstances, air can work as a power conductor and sparks and lighting can fly up and out of the substation. To be clear, this is a bad thing, and it’s our job to make sure that this doesn’t happen.
One way to stop these problems from happening is fuses. The downside to a fuse is that they’re a one-time solution, and once they break the current, they need to be replaced. Circuit breakers, on the other hand, are also meant to interrupt huge voltages but without causing damage to the breaker. Not every fault is the same, and sometimes workers even know about a disturbance ahead of time and can trip breakers early to prevent damage.
Why Do We Need Substations?
Many substations use smaller transformers to monitor and control power on the grid, such as instrument transformers. Regulators can also monitor the power going out to consumers.
Substations are built to be very danger-free, built with multiple safeguards to prevent anyone from coming in, from making sure that electricity doesn’t arc between existing substation infrastructure.
Substation Upgrades
As they are such finely honed pieces of engineering, a substation needs to always be on the cutting edge, as older substations can cause small problems that soon become big problems (such as small fires that become raging fires both in residential neighborhoods and in wilderness areas).
Cache Valley Electric has experienced project managers, dedicated field leadership, and skilled union linemen who are capable of upgrading any substation. How do we know? Because we have decades of experience doing just that. We use state-of-the-art technologies and techniques to upgrade your substation, all while staying perfectly on schedule and coming in under budget.
And we’re not just blowing smoke. We have literally hundreds of successful substation upgrades over the years, in remote environments to dense urban areas.
