Baker Street lanes conversion project shorted out
By Nelson Daily Staff
The civil works portion of the Baker Street lanes conversion project previously scheduled for recommencement March 14 has been postponed to April 4 due to current ground conditions (frost levels) which prohibit project efficiencies and promote increased safety risks.
For additional information or updates please check the City of Nelson website at www.nelson.ca or call Nelson Hydro Administration at (250) 352-8240.
Downtown conversion project
The downtown conversion project for the city’s electrical system is expected to improve service for most of the downtown businesses.
The electrical distribution system downtown will be going underground, increasing its capacity and will allow the City’s utility company to minimize the effect an outage will have.
Most of the distribution system in the city is of the 25 kilovolt type, but the downtown core is the ‘oddball’ in the system. By making the conversion from the current four kV to 25 kV it allows Nelson Hydro to standardize the entire distribution system.
It also improves the efficiency of the system with a corresponding decrease in load currents.
With a price tag of $1.5 million, the project moved forward in 2010 and into 2011, with ‘clean up’ happening in 2012. The money will be drawn from Nelson Hydro reserves, part of the five-year capital project plan the company has devised.
What will be done
The City and Nelson Hydro began upgrading the entire 60-year-old electrical distribution system, with some of the ‘civic’ work underground last fall.
The work entails replacing the old transformers, moving them from atop power poles and placing them on pads, with utility boxes surrounding them, with the primary high voltage wires put underground.
In all, there will be 12 alley and street intersection points where the boxes will be located, with a project also underway to possibly paint murals on the transformer boxes.
