The Santa Cruz Reliability Project is designed to reduce the potential for a major, sustained outage in Santa Cruz County. Power outages would be less frequent and shorter because UniSource could supply energy from more than one direction to the substations that support service to residents, businesses, service providers and other customers in the area.
The Santa Cruz Reliability (SCR) Project North will strengthen the local energy grid by constructing a 138 kilovolt (kV) transmission line to connect the Kantor substation to the regional electric grid in Pima County. This project would improve service reliability for customers by beginning the process of converting the current radial line configuration to a looped transmission system.
The new single-circuit transmission line would be installed in rights-of-way on weathering steel monopoles. UniSource also would expand the Kantor Substation, extending the property boundary by about 20 acres to accommodate setback, security, and operations and maintenance requirements. The substation improvements would support reliability for customers, allowing UniSource to perform maintenance without interrupting circuit operations.
SCR North is the first of three phases UniSource is planning to improve the high-voltage transmission system serving Santa Cruz County.
