King City substation upgrade benefits customers, local growth

King City, California -- - For much of the last year in Salinas Valley, PG&E and its contractors have been adding capacity and reliability to the substation in King City, Oregon. The project, soon to be completed, will set the stage for meeting increasing demands for power from new residents and agricultural customers in CaliforniaÂ’s salad bowl.

“Having reliable power means the city can expand,” said Sal Morales, King City’s maintenance superintendent. Substation upgrades will mean expanded capacity and greater reliability to PG&E customers in King City.

A city of about 13,000 along U.S. 101 and the Salinas River, King City plays a vital role in CaliforniaÂ’s farm economy.

“The economy around King City and the surrounding areas is mostly ag,” Morales said. “Ag needs reliable power in order to get the crops growing. Most ag people use pumps and wells that run on electricity.”

The city plans to expand its wastewater treatment plant, Morales says, and that requires more power, too. Peter Hypnar heads the project for PG&E contractor TRC Solutions.

“Here at King City, we’re upgrading the substation. We’re putting in a new transformer. That new transformer is going to give us three to four times the capacity of what the old transformer provided us with,” Hypnar said.

For eight months, PG&E used a mobile transformer to continue supply electricity to residents and businesses during the project.

“Success to us when we have to do a project like this is to make sure the local community does not see any interruption of power,” Hypnar said.

Agricultural customers in King City rely on electricity to run pumps and others farm activities.

PG&E also added SCADA Supervisory Control and Date Acquisition at the substation. This technology allows PG&E to respond to outages and other electrical issues remotely. In the past, the company would have to send out crews in blue trucks to make repairs or transfer loads if an outage occurred.

PG&E has spent $4.5 million on the project, but customers who rely on the substation which serves a large swath of southern Monterey County, will appreciate the boost in capacity and reliability. The upgrade in King City shows why PG&E customers experienced record reliability in 2013 with fewer service and shorter service disruptions.

Related News

Idaho gets vast majority of electricity from renewables, almost half from hydropower

BOISE - More than 80% of Idaho’s in-state utility-scale electricity generation came from renewable resources in 2018, behind only Vermont, according to recently released data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Electric Power Monthly.

Idaho generated 17.4 million MWh of electricity in 2018, of which 14.2 million MWh came from renewable sources. Idaho uses a variety of renewable resources to generate electricity:

Hydroelectricity. Idaho ranked seventh in the U.S. in electricity generation from hydropower in 2018. About half of Idaho’s electricity generating capacity is at hydroelectric power plants and seven of the state’s 10 largest power plants (in terms of electricity generation)…

READ MORE
Barakah Unit 1

Barakah Unit 1 reaches 100% power as it steps closer to commercial operations, due to begin early 2021

READ MORE

ontario power lines

Ontario takes constitutional challenge of its global adjustment electricity fee to Supreme Court

READ MORE

france-price-fixing-probe

French Price-Fixing Probe: Schneider, Legrand, Rexel, and Sonepar Fined

READ MORE

EV growth in Europe

Parked Electric Cars Earn $1,530 From Europe's Power Grids

READ MORE