Grant County PUD will be building two new electrical power substations and upgrading two existing substations in the Quincy area in Washington by the end of 2017.
Grant County PUD has adopted a new process to build and fix substations, where the whole project is designed and built by the same company to PUD specifications. Andrew Munro of the PUD said utility district officials decided to use the "design-build" system as a way to speed up the process. The PUD had been looking at a backlog extending up to five years to finish current substation projects and requests, Munro explained, and the design-build system is projected to cut the construction time significantly to only about 18 months.
The two new substations, Quincy Plains and Cloudview, will both be constructed in the Port of Quincy. The Quincy Plains substation is being built for an industrial customer and will serve that customer, while the Cloudview substation is being built at the request of another customer, but will have room for two additional industrial customers, Munro said. The Cloudview construction is scheduled to begin in October and will be completed by August 2017. Construction for Quincy Plains starts in November and should be completed by August 2017.
An existing substation near Quincy at Babcock has old equipment in it that's being replaced, Munro said. The substation at Winchester in the Quincy Valley is over capacity and is being upgraded to improve its reliability. Construction on the Babcock substation begins in June and should be completed in October, while construction at the Winchester substation is scheduled for October 2016 to May 2017
