By Shelly Ridenour | Casa Grande Dispatch
Fourteen years of work are finally coming to fruition for the Pinal West electric project.
The $500 million project will result in an additional 500,000 volts of available electricity in and around Pinal County. It includes five new substations and new transmission lines stretching across 145 miles.
The three-stage project is about two-thirds complete, according to Project Manager Dan Hawkins with Salt River Project.
The project is expected to provide greater reliability to the power grid in central Arizona, he said.
Phase one of the project runs 50 miles from the Hassayampa switchyard to a new substation southwest of the city of Maricopa.
That substation is named Pinal West. It is complete, has been energized and is ready to be connected to transmission lines. Stage two began at an existing SRP station near Apache Junction and runs 45 miles south to a newly constructed Coolidge generating station. It’s also finished, Hawkins said.
The middle portion is the last construction segment and is nearly finished, he said.
It connects the Pinal West substation to the Pinal Central substation, another new substation located directly across from the Pinal Fairgrounds and Event Center at Eleven Mile Corner.
Only dirt work is occurring at the site now, SRP spokesman Scott Harelson said. But activity will ramp up soon there, he said.
The construction effort involves 200-foot cranes setting 170-foot-tall poles. Once the poles are in place, helicopters arrive to pull the electric lines into place, Hawkins said. The plan calls for poles and lines to be placed in April, the two men said.
Construction of the Duke substation near Maricopa is also under way, Hawkins said.
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