More than 12,000 homes and businesses throughout Logan City, Queensland, Australia, have received a boost to their power supplies following the completion of a $12 million investment at ENERGEX’s Loganlea substation.

The works involved upgrades at the Meakin Road substation, dramatically increasing the available power capacity for Logan City. Homes and businesses in parts of Kingston, Loganlea, Meadowbrook, Berrinba, Browns Plains, Crestmead, Drewvale, Marsden, Logan Central, Bethania, Tanah Merah, Daisy Hill, Shailer Park, Slacks Creek, Woodridge and Springwood directly benefit from the project. ENERGEX Network Programs Group Manager Kevin Ball said the improvements would ensure homes and businesses in Logan City continue to have a reliable power supply for many years to come. “This upgrade was about ensuring ENERGEX meets Logan’s current and projected power usage needs, which are currently forecast to grow by around 25 per cent in the next five years,” said ENERGEX’s Network Programs Group Manager Kevin Ball.

Ball added, “Logan City is one of the fastest growing areas of south east Queensland with dozens of new homes and businesses connecting to the power grid every week. Additionally domestic power use has risen on average around 50 to 70 per cent in the past 10 years due in the main to a rapid take up of electricity hungry lifestyle products such as affordable home air-conditioning, larger televisions and other energy intensive household products. To meet this massive growth, in the past four years ENERGEX has spent more than $85 million upgrading the region’s electricity network.”

Ball said the new substation at Loganlea would relieve electricity demand levels at the company’s Tanah Merah, Woodridge and Kingston substations.

The project is part of a record $4 billion-plus five-year capital expenditure program currently being undertaken by ENERGEX. In the 2008-09 financial year ENERGEX is investing around $830 million on upgrades to its electricity network while a further $340 million-plus has been set aside to maintain and operate the network – that’s an overall average of more than $3 million a day.