PUD considering rebuilding substation

Wahkiakum County PUD commissioners heard reports and took time to check out the new bucket truck at their meeting Tuesday morning.

"Just going to let you look at your quarter of a million dollar truck," General Manager David Tramblie said before everyone stepped outside.

Tramblie shared some of his thoughts about the Grays River substation project.

He has asked the PUD's engineering firm, Brown and Kysar for an estimate to replace all of the equipment at the substation. Meanwhile, he's considering other options.

One option may be to replace the old transformer from 1952 with the spare, which would take a minimum of a 24-36 hour outage. The old transformer would have to be completely rebuilt, sandblasted and painted.

"It may be a good option; it may not," Tramblie said. "There is going to be quite a bit of cost and labor in that as opposed to just buying a new transformer."

If the PUD decides to rebuild the entire substation, they would need to bring in a portable substation from BPA to provide power.

"We're probably looking at a five to six month construction window," Tramblie said. "Just to have that portable substation for that long could run into $100,000 plus."

That cost has Tramblie thinking about talking to Pacific PUD about building a 3.5 mile intertie that would provide power during the summer months.

"In order to build something like that we're in the $500,000 range," Tramblie said. "But that would allow us a lot more flexibility at the substation. We could be offline and not need the portable substation."

Tramblie was also considering a project to replace lines on Altoona Pillar Rock Road.

"We have old underground conductor out there," Tramblie said. "We've replaced everything from the intersection of Barr Road and Altoona, upgraded that whole line to Eden Valley with mostly underground and little bit of overhead. Now we want to finish that section from Eden Valley out about 3000 feet. We're going to try to complete the project before this summer."

Auditor Erin Wilson went over December financials.

The Residential Energy Assistance Program was well utilized at the beginning of the year," Wilson said. "We started out on January 1 with $1,535. To date we've received $820 in donations and provided $2,163 in assistance. We now have $192 available."

The next PUD meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, February 16, at 8:30 a.m. in the PUD meeting room.