Nelson Hydro hosts information meetings regarding downtown upgrades
By Nelson Daily Staff
Nelson Hydro and the City of Nelson have scheduled a public information meeting Wednesday (July 10) at 7 p.m. to discuss the upcoming hydro distribution upgrade program.
The meeting is being held in the Hume Room at the Hume Hotel.
Hydro and City of Nelson staff will be available to share with downtown business owners, employees and residents plans to upgrade the overhead hydro distribution system currently found in the alley lanes on both sides of Baker Street.
Construction, led by to Castlegar’s Martech Electrical Systems, is scheduled to begin on aging system later this month.
“(Representatives) will be on hand to explain why the project is necessary, its benefits, and ways in which downtown business owners and residents should prepare for the project’s impacts,” said a City of Nelson/Nelson Hydro statement.
“Those impacts include occasionally scheduled power outages and revised vehicle and pedestrian traffic.”
This project, the last of the four-phase Downtown Conversion program, will include the replacement of aging wooden hydro poles with new hydro poles in Baker Street’s back lanes, new overhead secondary lines, underground primary lines, new transformers and an increased voltage capacity of 25kV from 4 kV.
There will be considerable benefit to the new system, including:
• Improved reliability, quality and capacity of the downtown electrical system for existing and future customers
• Fewer poles in the alleyways, making for easier vehicle and pedestrian traffic flow, parking and delivery
• Improved lighting and aesthetics, with less visual clutter thanks to the reduction of poles and overhead transformer banks
There will be a cultural and heritage aspect to the project as well.
As local residents and visitors have noticed, new transformer islands already installed around town are adorned with the history of Nelson Hydro and the City’s numerous ‘ghost buildings’.
The Downtown Conversion project is another step in Nelson Hydro’s commitment to the City’s Long Term Hydro Transmission and Distribution Upgrade Plan.
Most of the utility’s transmission line upgrades have been completed and the voltage conversion projects including Front Street, Downtown, Uphill and Rosemont are either completed or slated for completion, in the fall of this year.
