Northwest 500-230kV Substation

Complex projects always present a great chance to improve our understanding of the industry because it’s an opportunity to interface with the best and brightest stakeholders in the market. So when NV Energy brought us on to design their new Northwest 500-230-kilovolt Substation, we made sure to integrate with staff and develop the day-to-day knowledge of what it takes to run a generating plant in Nevada.

Our role? We were the lead design consultant, preparing the detailed design drawings for the Northwest Substation expansion. The goal? To increase the power delivery system capacity and improve the reliability of the electrical grid. To that end, we prepared civil, structural, and yard physical drawings, a new control building, preparation of relay and control schemes, panel wiring, SCADA installation, and AC and DC power systems.

The project required the design of a new 500-kilovolt ring bus yard, a 1500-million-volt-ampere transformer bank installation, and the addition of seven 230-kilovolt breakers in the existing station—to convert a ring bus to a breaker-and-a-half scheme.

A power system like this can be very challenging, but our team provided a complete and compliant design solution that met the client’s needs and jurisdictional requirements.