Home  FW&A News   Power-full Engineering Supports JEA's...

Press Releases

Power-full Engineering Supports JEA’s Electrical System Expansion

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Jacksonville, Fla. – In response to significant residential growth on the east side of Jacksonville, JEA recently constructed a 230-kV electrical power substation that will improve service reliability to expanding residential communities between Arlington and the Intracoastal West. Development of the $4.6 million Mt. Pleasant Substation illustrates the critical role that engineering plays in electric utility infrastructure growth.  
                                    
JEA selected a 6.8-acre site just east of Kernan Blvd. between Atlantic Blvd. and McCormick Rd., along the route of four existing overhead transmission lines. The primary purpose of the Mt. Pleasant Substation is to reduce the high-voltage power being transmitted through two of those lines down to levels that can safely be distributed to local customers. The substation “taps into” the 230-kV power and directs it through transformers that convert the voltage to 26.4 kV. The medium-voltage power then emerges from the substation through a network of underground lines that deliver it to surrounding neighborhoods.
 
The Mt. Pleasant Substation also protects JEA’s 900-square-mile power system and ensures that power disruptions in the immediate area affect as few customers as possible. Each section of the station has circuit-interrupting devices that can isolate electrical fluctuations such as fault currents caused by low-hanging tree limbs or overcurrent surges caused by lightning strikes. When sensors detect problems on a certain line, the substation equipment breaks the line’s connection to the rest of the system until the problem is resolved.      

Successful construction and operation of any substation requires extensive engineering, so JEA chose Jacksonville-based Fred Wilson & Associates to design the Mt. Pleasant project. 

“Substation design is a complicated and fascinating task,” said FW&A Project Principal William Wilson Jr., P.E. “For the Mt. Pleasant project, we had to assemble a team of engineers with four different areas of specialization.”

FW&A civil engineers planned the site development according to environmental regulations and relevant permitting standards. The engineers discovered that, when JEA had purchased the property years earlier, the utility had agreed to maintain a 100-foot buffer between the property line and any future constructed facility. That restriction severely limited design options. With some creativity, however, the engineers crafted a site plan that fit within the allotted perimeter.

With site design established, the firm’s electrical substation engineers completed the bulk of the project, including physical arrangement of all the outdoor substation equipment, lightning protection and all indoor and outdoor lighting. 

FW&A electrical transmission engineers designed the connections to incoming power lines, including new transmission poles. The firm’s structural engineers designed a small control building and foundations for the heavy substation equipment. 

Though the substation is a feat of engineering, it won’t draw much attention. "We used a low-profile design, which kept most equipment below the surrounding tree line," said FW&A Project Manager Larry Jones, P.E.  “Now that JEA has added a landscaped berm in front, most people won’t even know the substation is there – except the engineers who designed it, of course (and whoever happens to be riding with us when we drive by).”

JEA is the eighth largest community-owned electric utility in the United States, providing electric, water and sewer service to more than 875,000 accounts in Northeast Florida.

# # #

Contact:  Marketing (click here to submit a message through the Web site)

Phone:  904.398.8636  

Mail:  Fred Wilson & Associates, Inc.
          3970 Hendricks Avenue
          Jacksonville, FL  32207-5398