Growth drives upgrades to YEC system

What does into plan­ning upgrades to an elec­tri­cal sys­tem? For York Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive, the main answer is growth. Over the last decade, com­mu­ni­ties served by York Elec­tric have been some of the fastest-grow­ing in the nation, accord­ing to the U.S. Cen­sus Bureau.

Craig Spencer, the cooperative’s vice pres­i­dent of engi­neer­ing, says he has seen YEC’s mem­ber­ship — now more than 60,000 and count­ing — triple dur­ing his 28-year tenure. Spencer and the engi­neer­ing and oper­a­tions teams at York Elec­tric have tak­en on numer­ous new projects over the last few years.

York Elec­tric’s Craig Spencer mon­i­tors read­ings at the new Van Wyck Sub­sta­tion, which serves one of the coop­er­a­tive’s fastest grow­ing areas.[/caption]

“If we didn’t have the growth, a lot of the projects wouldn’t be nec­es­sary,” Spencer says. “You’ve got to upgrade your lines and your sys­tem to meet the growth.”

Deter­min­ing where those upgrades are need­ed is a sophis­ti­cat­ed for­mu­la that fac­tors not only pop­u­la­tion pro­jec­tions but also ener­gy load data. Engi­neers and advi­sors cre­ate a three- to four-year work plan based on increas­ing — and decreas­ing — usage across York Electric’s sys­tem.

“By look­ing at how past loads have grown over time with new mem­bers, new sub­di­vi­sions and new com­mer­cial projects, we kind of know what’s com­ing,” Spencer explains. “We know that areas like Lake Wylie, Fort Mill and Lan­cast­er Coun­ty are grow­ing at a faster rate than the west­ern part of our ser­vice ter­ri­to­ry.”

As loads increase and change, so must the deliv­ery sys­tem. The sub­sta­tions and cir­cuits that reli­ably pro­vid­ed elec­tric­i­ty 20 years ago might now be over­bur­dened, com­pro­mis­ing reli­a­bil­i­ty for mem­bers on those lines.

“We try to see what areas are stressed or are going to be stressed,” says Spencer. “You want to have a con­duc­tor there that will car­ry more than what is need­ed, even dur­ing extreme tem­per­a­tures.”

Plans also must fac­tor where the load cen­ters are locat­ed. York Elec­tric wants its sub­sta­tions, the facil­i­ties that con­nect dis­tri­b­u­tion lines to trans­mis­sion sources, to be near where pow­er is being used. As areas grow and the exist­ing sub­sta­tions serv­ing those areas become loaded, new sub­sta­tions are built to serve the increased loads and pro­vide capac­i­ty for new growth, result­ing in bet­ter reli­a­bil­i­ty for every­one.

“You are short­en­ing the amount of line between the mem­ber and the source, which reduces the like­li­hood of hav­ing pow­er inter­rup­tions because of trees falling or a car hit­ting a pole,” Spencer says. “If there is an out­age, it still may take the same amount of time to fix the prob­lem, but you can find it faster and you don’t have as many mem­bers affect­ed.”

Spencer says that improv­ing cir­cuits — the net­work of lines through which elec­tric­i­ty flows — has a sim­i­lar effect. Adding cir­cuits to exist­ing sub­sta­tions splits the load so that not as many peo­ple lose ser­vice in an out­age. Tech­no­log­i­cal advances also make the sys­tem more reli­able. In many cas­es, the coop­er­a­tive can com­mu­ni­cate with its equip­ment. Trou­ble areas are locat­ed quick­er, some­times before an out­age occurs.

For­tu­nate­ly, York Elec­tric has been able to make these invest­ments with­out rais­ing rates.

“The growth helps spread the costs among more mem­bers and more ener­gy sales,” Spencer says. “Under the lead­er­ship of our board of direc­tors and man­age­ment team, we try to make wise deci­sions to main­tain and mod­i­fy the elec­tri­cal sys­tem to han­dle the growth and pro­vide reli­able ser­vice to our mem­bers. That helps min­i­mize what has to be recov­ered from the mem­ber­ship.”

And helps the coop­er­a­tive get ready for more mem­bers to come online.

YEC’s system upgrade breakdown

York Elec­tric has made major upgrades to our sys­tem in the last few years, keep­ing pace with growth occur­ring in our com­mu­ni­ties and assur­ing reli­a­bil­i­ty for all our mem­ber­ship. The fol­low­ing is a break­down of those upgrades and the areas that ben­e­fit.

Lake­view Sub­sta­tion

Serves: Fort Mill area between I‑77 and Lan­cast­er Co. line.

Upgrade: Added sec­ond pow­er trans­former, dou­bling capac­i­ty. Added cir­cuits, allow­ing for the abil­i­ty to split elec­tri­cal loads and increase reli­a­bil­i­ty.

India Hook Sub­sta­tion

Serves: South­ern side of Lake Wylie between High­way 274 and India Hook Rd.

Upgrade: Rebuilt one of the orig­i­nal coop­er­a­tive sub­sta­tions, replac­ing old equip­ment with more state-of-the art tech­nol­o­gy and increas­ing capac­i­ty.

Van Wyck Sub­sta­tion

Serves: Cataw­ba Reser­va­tion area and por­tions of Lan­cast­er Co. to the state line.

Upgrade: Anoth­er orig­i­nal sub­sta­tion rebuilt, increas­ing sta­tion capac­i­ty and the phys­i­cal size of the sta­tion to allow for future addi­tion­al cir­cuits. Expand­ed and upgrad­ed cir­cuits from Indi­an Land High School, across High­way 521 along Collins Rd.

Banks Street Sub­sta­tion, cir­cuits 1 and 2

Serves: Water­side and Mason’s Bend com­mu­ni­ties, Cataw­ba Ridge High School and Nation Ford Chem­i­cal.

Upgrade: Increased capac­i­ty in this area by tak­ing a deliv­ery from an exist­ing Duke sta­tion. This arrange­ment was more cost effec­tive than build­ing our own sub­sta­tion in this area. Con­struct­ed a dou­ble cir­cuit to serve the grow­ing mem­ber­ship and increase reli­a­bil­i­ty to one of our large indus­tri­al mem­bers— Nation Ford Chem­i­cal.

Sev­en Oaks Sub­sta­tion

Serves: North of the Five Points area around the Lake Wylie com­mu­ni­ty.

Upgrade: Addi­tion of cir­cuit 5 allows the co-op to accom­mo­date for high growth in the area around Crow­ders Creek Ele­men­tary School and reduce load on its Cataw­ba sub­sta­tion. The addi­tion of cir­cuit 1 will split the load along High­way 274 north­west of Pole Branch Rd. to increase capac­i­ty and increase reli­a­bil­i­ty.

Haney Road line con­ver­sion

Serves: Haney Rd. and por­tions of the Hands Mill sub­di­vi­sion.

Upgrade: Con­vert­ed a sin­gle-phase line to a three-phase line, increas­ing the con­duc­tor size to increase capac­i­ty, split the load and increase reli­a­bil­i­ty.

Jim McCarter Rd. Reclos­er

Serves: Between Clover and York along Jim McCarter, Tom Joye and Bur­rell Roads.

Upgrade: Installed an elec­tron­ic reclos­er which requires less main­te­nance and incor­po­rates smart con­trols that can iden­ti­fy and iso­late out­ages down­line.

Aycock School Sub­sta­tion

Serves: South­west­ern York Coun­ty around the McConnells area.

Upgrade: A new sub­sta­tion is under­way along with a new trans­mis­sion line. The addi­tion of this sub­sta­tion will great­ly increase reli­a­bil­i­ty to mem­bers in this area. Con­struc­tion should be com­plete by sum­mer 2021.

Gray Rock Road con­ver­sion

Serves: Por­tion of Bax­ter and Lake Ridge com­mu­ni­ties.

Upgrade: Increased the con­duc­tor size to allow for more capac­i­ty, more effi­cient oper­a­tion and increased oper­a­tional flex­i­bil­i­ty.

Hwy. 49 con­ver­sion

Serves: Mem­bers along Char­lotte High­way Shiloh Farms and Hunter Park com­mu­ni­ties.

Upgrade: Increased the con­duc­tor size for more capac­i­ty and more effi­cient oper­a­tion.