Chicago is famous for its fabulous food and striking skyline.Can we now add aesthetically pleasing substations to the city?s attractions list?
Mayor Daley is very particular about the way substations look. In Chicago, substations have to fit in architecturally with the neighborhoods they power, so ComEd has come up with wonderful designs to grace the city. I saw quite a few of them on the way to one of the utility?s newest substations, West Loop. Our ComEd guide had devised a special substation-focused route through Chicago for the busload of IEEE-PES conference attendees I was with.
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There are plenty of substations to see, too, since Chicago?s been in construction-boom mode for 20 years?ComEd?s built two new substations every year for the last six or seven. Madison Substation, for instance, was very attractive, surrounded by lovely brick walls 15 feet to 20 feet high. Totally enclosed Ontario Substation received accolades 15 years ago when it was built. There?s a substation in the basement of Sears Tower that we didn?t visit, but ComEd prefers to keep outdoor equipment outdoors or at grade level, so it might not be built that way if the company could do it over. Now there?s enough capacity for ComEd to take a breather for four or five years and with the completion of the West Loop Substation, reliability is improved, too, as the hub and spoke design has been transformed to a network.
West Loop Substation was built on Goose Island, an industrial area, where the aesthetics aren?t quite as tricky, and it?s a modern marvel. ComEd brought the 345-kV transmission lines in under the river in a tunnel and power flows from there to fast-growing Chicago via connections to existing substations in the city. The first circuit was energized in February and the project, which began in June 2004, should be finished by the time this commentary is published. Not only did West Loop meet its time schedule but it came in under budget, with a price tag right around $265 million.
The transformer units, each weighing 70 tons, were delivered by barge. The gas-insulated switchgear installation consists of four 345-kV breaker bays with the potential to expand to 10?West Loop?s planners sized everything for expansion, from the yard to the cable room in the basement. Materials for the GIS filled 300 crates that were delivered by 42 trucks and took a half-year to put together. The 15-foot I.D. tunnel under the river is encased in concrete, making it maintenance-free. (If you?re claustrophobic, skip the amazing photos they have on display of this engineering feat.) The control room, filled with relay panels, will be unmanned, monitored by SCADA.
The next day I toured ComEd?s Operations Control Center, which covers the northern third of Illinois or roughly 74 percent of all the utility?s customers in Illinois. Peak as of 2006 was 23,613 MW and the area is growing quickly. In 2007, the OCC watched over 43,700 miles of overhead line and 44,100 miles of underground cable. The most exciting thing was seeing the SCADA system for the Chicago Loop area, but that?s all I?m going to say about the tour. Security is tight here (and at West Loop Substation) and after writing this issue?s Industry Report on cyber security, I have a heightened sense of concern.
The word that first popped into my head to describe West Loop was ?beautiful,? but I immediately edited myself. Was I being silly? Then I heard Michael Morris, AEP?s CEO, at a luncheon here in Tulsa say, ?I think power lines are things of beauty.? I agree: it?s the way they look, what they do, and the people who build and maintain them that make them?and substations?beautiful.
Today, people want all the accoutrements of the power system to be invisible. Sometimes that desire and the laws of physics are compatible, like on Goose Island or in Anaheim, Calif., where the underground substation described on page 56 was built. But we can?t bury everything and we can?t send it all out to the ?country? any more, either. Until our power delivery system is radically altered in some way we can?t even envision right now, it would be a good idea to see the beauty in the wires and the poles instead of wishing mightily they would go away.
Nancy Spring, managing editor
