Reconstruction of electrical substation to begin this month

Local company wins bid for control panels

Posted 4/27/21

A Powell company was awarded the final bid related to the reconstruction of the city’s Vining Substation. 

On April 19, the Powell City Council approved a bid of $70,830 from …

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Reconstruction of electrical substation to begin this month

Local company wins bid for control panels

Posted

A Powell company was awarded the final bid related to the reconstruction of the city’s Vining Substation. 

On April 19, the Powell City Council approved a bid of $70,830 from Powell-based Specialty Electrics Inc. for the electrical substation’s control panels. The city received a second bid on the project from Electrical Power Products Inc., out of Des Moines, Iowa, for $81,871.

The panels control everything in the substation. They monitor voltages and currents, which will protect the equipment. The engineer’s estimate for the panels was $80,000. 

The city previously awarded three other bids for the project, which all together total $2.8 million. That’s below the original cost estimate of $2.9 million. 

City Administrator Zack Thorington said Addison Construction of Cheyenne — which is performing the actual construction — recently held a pre-construction meeting with the city and the city’s engineer, HDR Engineering Inc.

“They will be mobilizing by the end of the month … It’s kind of exciting,” Thorington said of Addison. 

Thorington noted the construction will require citywide nighttime power outages that will be scheduled sometime this summer. 

Addison will begin pouring concrete for the transformer pads in May. The transformers are expected to arrive around May 20. 

The current estimated completion date of the entire reconstruction project is Dec. 31. 

City officials began planning the work after a fire broke out at the Vining Substation in July 2019 and left much of the town without power for several hours. The city performed some temporary repairs the following month to keep the 30-year-old substation afloat until a full reconstruction could be completed; that work required a series of three planned outages lasting a few hours in the middle of the night.

The State Loan and Investment Board provided the City of Powell with a $1.5 million loan for the project last June. 

In October, the city council awarded SPX Transformer Solutions, Inc., a $1 million contract for two megavolt ampere transformers. In March, the city awarded a $746,988 contract to Border States, out of Gillette, for the materials and equipment portion of the project. Earlier this month, the city awarded a $987,721 contract to Addison for the construction.

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