news

February 5, 2009

Hot topic: Transformer added to Vancouver substation

Not everyone in the city was sleeping in the wee hours of Sunday, February 1st. At Cathedral Square Substation in downtown Vancouver, contractors and crew members from BC Hydro and the British Columbia Transmission Corporation were busy performing electrical acceptance-testing, then lowering a third electrical transformer into the substation below the park’s surface at the intersection of Richards and Dunsmuir streets.
 
The 176-tonne transformer – about the weight of 30 African elephants - arrived via rail from ABB Plant, St. Louis, Missouri, and was transported from the waterfront rail yard on a 150-foot-long trailer after midnight.
 
Eight hours after the 30-foot long, 12-foot wide and 16-foot high transformer had arrived on-site, it was lifted and lowered 80 feet below the ground into the substation Level 1 by a 500-tonne crane amid a mid-day snowstorm and the gazes of a small group of dedicated, heavy-eyed onlookers – not to mention curious churchgoers at the cathedral across the street.

This third transformer is expected to be in service in a few months, after it has undergone installation and extensive testing. The project price tag is approximately $15.2 million, with the transformer making up $3.4 million of the total. In comparison, the entire substation and existing two transformers cost $48.6 million when it was first constructed back in the early 1980s.

The new transformer will increase the reliability of the existing electrical infrastructure to downtown Vancouver, while addressing the growing demand for electricity in the downtown core. It will give BC Hydro more redundancy in the system, so that the utility can easily transfer service from one transformer to another.
 
Currently, the substation serves about one third of the downtown electrical load with its two 25-year-old transformers that each have a life expectancy of 50 years. From the beginning, it was built with the capacity to house a third transformer.
 
When the substation was constructed, the underground project was one of the first of its kind in North America, with the excavation causing no damage to adjacent properties even though building occurred only meters from the SkyTrain tunnel, a large gas main and the Holy Rosary Cathedral foundation.
 
When the substation was completed in 1984, an urban park was built atop of the upper slab of concrete and air vents set up that were intended to heat tropical plants beneath large, arched canopies – a utopian dream that was never realized.