As part of the effort to plan for additional customers and increased power consumption, Rocky Mountain Power is upgrading and rebuilding existing power lines throughout Summit County.
Rocky Mountain Power and its parent company, PacifiCorp., will be upgrading various power lines to handle 138,000 volts of electricity instead of the current 46,000 volts. Existing power poles will be replaced and may look different, according to Rocky Mountain Power spokesman Jeff Hymas, but will not resemble main grid transmission lines.
“They are still local transmission-line poles, but they will probably be larger and taller than the current ones,” Hymas said. “These poles are in other communities. People are afraid that these are going to look like the high-voltage power lines that bring electricity from power plants but there not…they will be made of wood and steel and some people may not even notice.”
Power lines around Park City will be upgraded as well as those that run from Evanston, Wyoming to the Snyderville Basin and the line from Kamas to Oakley. The Park City substation will be upgraded and the substation in Coalville is slated to be completely rebuilt, according to Hymas.
“The new line from Kamas to Oakley is necessary to increase the reliability of electricity in the area and decrease the length of power outages,” he said.
According to Hymas, the average Rocky Mountain Power customer uses 26 percent more power today than 20 years ago.
“Summit County continues to grow and we need to plan ahead to accommodate the need for additional resources and get the infrastructure in place,” said Hymas. “Not only do we have an increase in new customers, but our current customers are using more electricity than before.”
Scott Paxman, assistant general manager at the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District, said upgrades are being done at the Wanship Dam Hydropower Plant to accommodate the new high-voltage lines at Rocky Mountain Power’s expense.
The planning and permitting process is still not complete for some of the lines, including the ones in Park City, Kamas and Oakley, but Hymas said Rocky Mountain Power is hoping the new lines will follow the same paths as the existing ones.
The new Evanston line is currently under construction and is expected to reach Summit County by 2013. The Kamas to Oakley line has received the necessary permits and is set to begin construction in early 2012. The Coalville Substation is set to be rebuilt in 2012. The Park City lines and substation are still in the early planning stages, according to Hymas, but in order to accommodate projected growth they need to be upgraded by the fall of 2013.
“The planning process for these upgrades takes us a long time. We want to work with local officials and landowners and get the public involved since these improvements involve everyone and will be in place for a long time,” Hymas said.