New employees tour Ault Substation

“Everything we do will be safe,” Rocky Mountain Safety Manager Tim Duffy said, as the tour group prepared to enter the substation. “We’ll start in the building. Please do not lean up against anything. Do not turn any knobs. Do not push any buttons.”

That would result in an instant call from Rocky Mountain’s dispatch office in Loveland, Colorado, asking what’s happening, he explained.

Wearing WAPA-branded hard hats, the group of eight, consisting mostly of recent hires, made their way into the Ault Substation maintenance building. Located roughly between Fort Collins and Greeley, the substation building and yard have continually undergone upgrades and renovation since WAPA acquired them from the Bureau of Reclamation in the late 1970s.

Working amid cabinets full of relays, WAPA meter and relay technicians performed everyday maintenance tasks to protect the power system from threats like surges from lightning strikes, short circuits (or “faults”), and accidental contact with farm or construction equipment.

In a small room, Duffy pointed out a large bank of two-volt electric batteries that are continually charging. In the event of an outage, the batteries provide direct-current, backup power to the relay equipment inside the substation.

“We have to rely on DC power to protect our AC system,” he explained. “We run redundant battery chargers as well. We can shut one off – one is enough – but we have two going for if we ever have one that fails.”

The battery charging equipment can also run on generator power, providing an additional layer of redundancy.

Duffy pointed out the colored tagging system that Maintenance workers deploy whenever they’re working on equipment throughout the substation. The tags help ensure the safety of WAPA employees by alerting staff to unusual system configurations and by facilitating coordinated switching operations between substation and dispatch employees when they energize and de-energize lines.

“Anyone at any time can stop if there’s a question. ‘Hey, I don’t think this is right; we need to talk about this,’” Duffy said. “The last thing we want is someone to have a switching error. That’s bad for the system and it’s bad for our people.”

Leaving the building and entering the 345-kilovolt yard, the group walked through the hulking steel masses of transmission system components – high-voltage circuit breakers, switches, transformers – under the buzzing electric-conductor canopy. As they walked, they commented to each other on the sensation induced by static electricity on skin, a strange feeling that comes along with moving inside the machinery of the grid.

The invisible mist of static electricity creates challenging conditions. It emanates from the bare electric conductors that crisscross above the substation yard. Duffy described how Maintenance employees wear bands that function to ground them and equalize their bodies with the static electric charges. Maintenance mainstays, such as scissor lifts, receive cables connected to an underground network of grounded wires, helping maintain safe working conditions.

The group learned about how giant circuit breakers filled with sulfur hexafluoride function in concert with the relays seen earlier inside the building. Together, they turn the circuits on and off through which power flows across the transmission grid. Duffy elaborated on the anatomy and physiology of the substation, including bushings, transformers, conservator tanks and radiators.

When the visitors arrived at the ultimate destination of the tour, the 600-megavolt-amp Siemens transformer, the group looked dwarfed by the sheer size of the machine. Transformers are designed to last around 50 years, yet thanks to steady maintenance, the fleet at WAPA has some transformers pushing 80 years old and still humming, Duffy said.

One of the Ault transformers would soon need a bushing replacement inside its huge oil-filled cavity. Duffy explained how they would drain the oil down and send in someone wearing a protective suit to swap out the old part.

“That’s the new guy who gets to do that?” joked Chief Appraiser Steve Kunkel, one of the participants.

“Yeah, that’s the apprentice who’s doing it. Rightfully so!” Duffy quipped back.

“I was that guy for many years, so I don’t have sympathy for him,” he added.

The Oct. 2 tour represented the first of what WAPA envisions as many future field excursions aimed at inspiring and educating new employees, said Management Analyst Danielle Gioso. She organized the tour on behalf of the Chief Administrative Officer.

Closed Circuit asked Senior Vice President and CAO Jennifer Rodgers about her vision for these types of site visits.

“This is what we see as the ‘WAPA 103’ onboarding course for new employees,” she said. “We plan to make these a regular offering for new employees to get them quickly engaged and interested in the mission-critical work that we all support.”

One of the participants later shared his reflections about the site visit.

“It was my first time visiting a substation, and it was interesting to not only see how it ramps power up and down, but to learn about the security aspects of protecting the grid,” Program Analyst Ian Jobe said.

“Afterwards, I couldn’t help but wonder ‘how many houses and business in the area are powered just by this single substation?’” he added.