Project

West Springfield 8C Substation

West Springfield 8C is one of the oldest Eversource Energy substations, located on an easement property owned by West Springfield Generating Station (North America Energy Alliance LLC).

The original four-bay lattice structure substation was built in 1927 to serve the Agawam Substation and local 13-kV distribution. A second single-bay structure was added to support generation and 115-kV HPFF transmission to Breckwood Substation. The third addition was completed in 1965 using tubular bus and serves Agawam and Clinton substations, Unit 2 and Unit 3 generators. 

This project included replacing the existing air-insulated switchgear with gas-insulated switchgear (GIS) substation.

Exemplary Safety, Exceeding Schedule & Budget Goals

Innovative solutions to engineering and construction allowed our team to deliver the project safely. The implementation of our proactive, safety-first culture, along with our entrepreneurial spirit, created results that exceeded client expectations.

Client

Eversource Energy

Location

West Springfield, Massachusetts

Region

Northeast

Service

Substations

Industry

Power

Scope of Work

Substation and transmission line engineering

Procurement

Construction

Testing and commissioning

Outage sequencing and planning

Optimized Substation Design

Our team worked with Siemens, the GIS vendor, and construction partners to optimize the substation design, including:

  • Unique overhead monopole designs to transition from overhead lines to GIS bushings
  • Maximize pre-outage work and equipment testing before cutovers
  • Improved line terminal designs that minimize durations of cutovers
  • Minimize site excavation and generation of excess material
  • Creation of 13,000 square feet of open space for future site expansion

A complex cutover sequence for the 10 circuits was developed to achieve these goals:

  • Establish two three-terminal sources to the existing AIS substation and new GIS substation
  • Maintain reliability of generation and distribution load by keeping the ring bus configuration until the last cutovers
  • Minimize the duration of each of the individual outages

Because of various permitting and easement limits, the construction space for this project was constrained. Our team worked with our construction partners to generate construction plans addressing off-site storage, laydown area, stock pile area and other construction logistics. Construction sequencing was carefully planned to accommodate critical project milestones and to level out the resource/construction space requirements.

Project Features

Technologies:
- 115-kV three-in-one gas insulated switchgear
- Protect and control utilized IEC 61850 design protocols

Specialized Areas & Project Features:
- Replacement of existing substation built in the 1920s
- Limited construction space

Unique Characteristics:
- Yearlong effort to commission new GIS substation and keep both substations operational and customers online during cutovers
- Siemens circuit breaker monitoring system, the first such application in the U.S.
- Siemens gas density monitoring