£650,000 boost for South Wales power network
Western Power Distribution (WPD) has invested more than £650,000 on a major upgrade which will boost power supplies in Bridgend, South Wales.
20th November 2018 by Networks
The improvement work to upgrade and reinforce the electricity network has recently been completed and will benefit the 7,000 customers who are fed from a primary substation site on the Bridgend Trading estate in Brackla.
Work has involved replacing two 33/11kV transformers – Brackla primary substation currently provides supplies to customers via a network of 86 small substations.
The project has provided some interesting engineering challenges particularly as the substation is located on a single track access road and is sandwiched between homes and the main Swansea to London railway line.
Projects engineer Luke Thomas, who managed the scheme said: “We used specialist heavy goods vehicles to deliver the new transformers and the equipment to site which then had to be rolled into position on skids. For safety reasons we weren’t able to use cranes because of the proximity to the railway line.
“We also installed new transformer plinths to accommodate sound enclosures which restricted our working area quite a bit, and we had to identify and divert 11kV feeders and remove old abandoned cables from the site.”
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