Missile Substation

Location: Eastern Plains, Colorado

Areas of Expertise: Substation

Hooper Corporation expanded the existing 345 kV – 230 kV Missile Site Substation located in Deer Trail, CO to support the connection of a significant amount of renewable generation in the area.   The substation is situated on a 23 acre site, with our expansion work fitting within the existing footprint.  Hooper’s construction crews expanded the 345 kV ring bus to include 2 new bays to facilitate the addition of 3 – 345 kV, 45 MVAR capacitor banks that will provide voltage support to the transmission system.  In addition to the added bays, Hooper was tasked with transferring 2 existing 345 kV transmission lines over to their newly installed dead end positions and making the final connections down to the 345 kV ring bus.  Hooper’s responsibility on this project included the installation of the concrete foundations, above & below grade raceway, steel structures, major electrical equipment, rigid aluminum bus & jumpers, relay panels, low voltage control cable, and the 25kV power cable.  In addition to these installation tasks, Hooper supported the testing & commissioning activities and was responsible for procuring the raceway, grounding, insulators, and conductor materials.

Hooper worked with our customer to coordinate and schedule the multi-phased outage sequence required to tie in the newly installed equipment.  Outages were needed to install the concrete foundations underneath the main buses, tie in the new ring bus bays to the main bus, and to cut over the transmission lines.  Each of the phases of the outage sequence had their challenges, but the transmission line cutovers presented us with an extremely aggressive schedule.  With the limited durations of time allotted from the outage coordinator for the transmission line work, Hooper safely worked 2-12 hour shifts, 7 days a week for 15 days to successfully complete the work on time.  In total, Hooper’s crews safely worked over 17,000 man hours to turn each of the outage phases over to our customer on or before the required dates.