UniSource upgrades powerlines, substations and other parts of our energy grid to prepare for summer’s high temperatures and powerful thunderstorms.
Our efforts to maintain and improve systems serving customers continues year-round. UniSource invested more than $23 million in 2023 alone to improve power lines, poles, transformers and other transmission and distribution equipment used every day to serve homes and businesses in our communities. Those efforts include significant substation upgrades and other improvements designed to maintain reliability, even when our local energy grid is placed under the greatest stress by hot weather and higher peak energy usage.
“We must continue to invest in our local energy grid so that customers have reliable service all year long. We’ve added new equipment in our substations, upgraded power lines and made other improvements so that we’re prepared for summer,” said Roberto Guevara, UniSource Director of Gas, Electric and Operational Excellence. “We’re also planning for future upgrades that will help meet our customers growing energy needs.”
This month, crews commissioned the new $8 million Meadview Substation, which will improve reliability and provide greater capacity to customers in Meadview and surrounding areas near Kingman. An additional $4 million investment in power lines to interconnect the new substation are nearly complete.
In Kingman, crews are upgrading more than a mile of power poles and power lines on Fairgrounds Boulevard, providing greater flexibility by allowing grid operators to route power from more than one direction to area customers. Construction will continue between Beverly and Pasadena avenues through the end of the year.
At the Mulberry Substation in Lake Havasu City, we invested about $1.4 million to upgrade existing breakers and add a new feeder breaker, which will provide greater capacity to serve customers peak energy needs. The substation was placed back into service last month.
UniSource also is preparing plans for new transmission facilities to improve the reliability and resiliency of the electrical transmission system serving Santa Cruz County.
The Santa Cruz Reliability (SCR) Project North will strengthen the local energy grid by constructing a second 138 kilovolt (kV) transmission line to connect the Canoa Ranch Substation, located in Pima County, and the Kantor substation, located in Santa Cruz County. The project is the first of three phases UniSource is planning to improve service to customers in the area.
A public open house meeting about the project is scheduled later this month. For more information about the project, visit uesaz.com/santa-cruz-reliability.
