Ameren Illinois to build $9.1M substation in southwest Champaign
Work is slated to begin this fall on a $9.1 million substation for Ameren Illinois operations in southwest Champaign, Ill. — an effort meant to reduce the voltage from large transmission lines and increase reliability, flexibility, and load capacity for the region.
The new substation should allow electricity to be better distributed to homes and businesses while reducing the overall footprint through a self-contained facility and reducing overall maintenance thanks to remote equipment monitoring and cameras. Ameren also noted that it should minimize wildlife exposure to energized equipment, thanks to an enclosed design and an underground-based power line source running from Bondville to the substation.
“Substations do not get a lot of fanfare, but they are critical elements in a reliable, resilient energy grid,” Ron Juarez, director of Eastern Region Electric Operations for Ameren Illinois, said. “Our southwest Champaign substation is a prototype that will serve as a design model for future substation construction throughout the Ameren Illinois service territory.”
The substation is expected to enter service in spring 2022. When it does, Juarez said, it will grant Ameren the ability to reroute power from other local substations to reduce outage durations and better address energy demand. It’s part of a larger reliability push for the company’s energy delivery system that, to date, has increased reliability an average of 22 percent while reducing outage timeframes by an average of 16 percent.
