North Central Electric Cooperative, Inc. (NCE) celebrated the construction of a new distribution substation in northern Wyandot County with a ribbon cutting ceremony on Wednesday morning. The Adrian substation marks the cooperatives 12th substation and the first built since 2002.
Vaughn Industries of Carey constructed the $2 million substation. The Adrian substation, located on Township Highway 107 in Tymochtee Township, was built to enhance service reliability and alleviate some of the load on the cooperative’s Carey substation, plus accommodate the growing demand of the National Lime and Stone Co. and Kalmbach Feeds near Carey.
“The new substation is going to add to the reliability of all the members in the Carey area because if we lose transmission service to our substation, we can backfeed our members from the Carey substation,” said Brad Warnement, director of engineering and operations.
“The Adrian substation will improve North Central’s ability to deal with power outages in this area. When the unfortunate outage happens due to accidents, weather incidents, etc. the Adrian substation allows us to restore power quicker. The substation also increases our capacity in this area for future growth,” said Board Trustee, Treasurer, and Wyandot County Commissioner Steve Seitz.
The Adrian substation will be connected to the cooperative’s supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system which gives the cooperative the ability to monitor electric load and control substations from their headquarters.
Substations are used to "step-down" electricity voltage from the larger American Electric Power transmission lines. Transmission lines are the high voltage power lines which act as an electricity super-highway and bring electricity to the area from the power plants. Substations then step-down the voltage which is then run through the cooperatives distribution lines to transformers.