Grant PUD Looks to Purchase $4.5 Million Substation

Grant County PUD is in the works of purchasing a 50 megawatt mobile substation, estimated to cost $4.5 million. The PUD already has two mobile substations, however this one would serve as a back up.

"Neither have sufficient capacity to replace the 41 megawatt transformer that our biggest industrial customers need," said Christine Pratt, spokeswoman.

According to Pratt, if one of the larger scale transformers were to fail it's currently a multiple day process to replace one. Which in turn would mean an outage would last for days.

"So a correctly sized mobile substation could just be moved into place to restore power in hours," said Pratt. "It would be a lot better solution for customers."

Due to industrial customers benefiting from the new substation, the rates these customers pay would cover, over time, the roughly $5 million cost.