Substation upgrades continue
Substation upgrades will bring greater reliability for nearly 7,000 customers in southeast Dearborn and Detroit’s Claytown, Michigan-Martin and Springwells neighborhoods by the end of 2024.
We’re investing $21 million to relocate substation equipment and upgrade the transformers, breakers, cabling and equipment that helps deliver power to homes and businesses in the area.
The new equipment will allow us to remotely monitor and control power flow at the substation, enabling us to identify and fix issues faster. This will help us keep power on for our customers, especially during extreme weather. The new equipment also will restore the substation’s capacity to power all the customers in this area.
Why we’re upgrading
In the past, heavy rainfall caused the substation basement to flood, damaging vital equipment. To ensure all customers in the area receive the power they need and reliability they deserve, we swiftly moved some customers’ service to nearby substations. We also placed portable generators in the community and constructed a pole farm outside of the substation. These temporary solutions helped improve short-term capacity constraints and reliability issues.
A pole farm is a collection of utility poles that help distribute power from the substation to customers.
Our progress
In addition to temporarily moving customers’ service to surrounding substations, we installed new conduit outside of the substation, which will protect new underground cables.
Recently, crews began relocating equipment from the basement to the second floor of the substation. They pulled in one new power line from the ground level to the upper level and are preparing to install a new transformer. This will help prevent any future equipment damage from possible flooding.
Over the next year, we will continue to relocate the equipment and install new, modernized equipment inside and outside the substation, including four new transformers.
Substation upgrades like this are part of the upgrading portion of our four-point plan. The plan also includes rebuilding older sections of the grid, transitioning to a smart grid and trimming trees. You can stay up to date on the substation updates by visiting empoweringmichigan.com/reliability-improvements. See other work happening in your area on our electric reliability improvements map.