Power substations are the veins that provide the lifeblood of America’s electrical grid.
That’s why protecting them at all costs whenever construction or maintenance is occurring near them is of the utmost importance.
National Grid states that “one of the main roles of substations is to convert electricity into different voltages.” This electricity is then distributed throughout the U.S. and provides the essential energy needed to thousands of homes, businesses, and buildings to keep us going along throughout our days without interruption. It’s extremely important to prevent underground electrical line damage when installing new fencing at a major substation, as was the case in Oregon, Ohio, for a well-known national security integration provider.
Electrical Substation Maintenance, Scope of Project
The contractor hired the SIM-certified team of GPRS Project Managers who have completed over 3,000 miles of Transmission ROW scanning & over 500 substation projects nationwide for major companies such as Duke Energy, American Electric Power, Ameren, FirstEnergy and Exelon, to ensure that the electrical substation construction they were performing would move forward without any hazardous utility strikes, causing potential loss of power, electrocution, or electrification of the grid around the station.
Our scope of work at the power transmission substation was to provide accurate utility location of all underground utility lines located within ten feet of both sides of the main fence that was scheduled to be replaced. This proved to be a large project for GPRS Project Manager Vijay Gentiles, who spent an entire week accurately mapping and locating telecommunication lines, electrical lines, water hydrants, an existing sanitary sewer line, as well as the entire grounding wire grid located within the fence’s domain.
Why It Matters
Power substations are high-risk areas to break ground due to essential utilities being located throughout the majority of the system. So, the best practice is hiring a nationwide subsurface damage prevention contractor such as GPRS to utilize the most cutting edge locating and mapping protocols. In this scenario and many others like it, the substation’s as-built drawings and existing condition records were out of date and incomplete, not providing the sufficient data needed to break ground with confidence on site. Crucial duct banks needed to be protected along with essential grounding grids during installation, so Gentiles sprung to action equipped with multiple forms of cutting-edge technology, including Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), and an Electromagnetic (EM) locator to accurately map out the proposed scan boundary for all underground utilities.
What We Discovered
While on site, Gentiles had to be extremely cautious, wearing proper PPE including fire retardant clothing per OSHA standards in case of an arc flash. As he conducted his meticulous subsurface investigation, he was able to locate both electrical and telecommunication lines throughout the entirety of the substation’s fence project. He discovered a sanitary storm line in one location, but found that it would not impact the project due to its depth.
The depths of the located lines were between two to three feet underground, while the sewer line was conveniently at a depth of five to six feet, where new fence poles being installed would not reach. After accurately mapping and marking out the lines with paint or color-coded flags, as shown in the images below, Gentiles then collected all the data with a GNSS Geode used to accurately inspect, map, and collect data points of underground utility locations. The site data was then uploaded to the cloud, and within five minutes of being collected was available within our new GIS for electric & telecommunication utilities software, SiteMap®.
The data collected by Gentiles and uploaded to SiteMap® provided an accurate below-ground digital map of the entire scan location as shown in the image below, giving a breakdown of each utility line and approximate depth where applicable.
How SiteMap® Enhances Substation Construction Safety
Every GPRS customer gets a complimentary SiteMap® Personal subscription with any GPRS utility locate project performed on their job site. This means that our customer’s superintendent was able to easily reference this accurate as-built map throughout the remainder of the fence replacement project. This gave him control to easily break down the as-built map to ensure he saw only what was needed for each leg of the project. From individual telecommunication lines as displayed in figure 2. To the entire as-built map as shown in figure 1. SiteMap® gave our customer what they needed, when they needed it, with the ease-of-use and constructability to be tailored to their needs.
Paint and flags on the ground, provided immediate visual representation of where underground lines were located on site. While SiteMap® provided an easy-to-use, geolocated, and a shareable digital utility map of all the data collected in the field by Gentiles. This information was accessible for the project superintendent on any tablet, computer, or mobile device 24/7, so that our customer was able to move forward with this electrical substation construction fence project without the frightful experience of a damaged electrical line, or a damaged grounding rod. Not only did this provide peace of mind when digging, but it ensured the project was able to be completed on budget, on time, and safe.
With GPRS’ existing condition documentation, subsurface damage prevention, and facility and property management services, you can get a suite of accurate utility as-built data, 3D building information (BIM) models, and Walkthru 3D data of your electrical substation jobsite. This will not only enable you with the accurate data you need to dig with confidence, but will give you the ability to Intelligently Visualize The Built World® above and below-ground while on your job site, in your truck, or behind your desk.
The dangers of working in and around substations are many. Mitigate them with the accurate data collected by GPRS Project Managers and provided to you via SiteMap®.
Schedule your live, personal SiteMap® demo with one of our SiteMap® experts today to learn more.
Frequently Asked Questions:
What are other ways SiteMap® Can Provide Accurate Data for My Substation Construction or Maintenance Project?
SiteMap® can aid in substation facility and project management through the use of accurate existing condition documentation technology such as 3D laser scanning and 3D photogrammetry, to provide you with accurate 3D Point Clouds, 2D CAD drawings, 3D BIM models, 3D mesh models, and much more. We’ve performed work on over 500 substations across the country, accurately locating their subsurface infrastructure below ground, and digitally mapping their existing conditions on site above ground, compiling all that data within our GIS utility software to help you plan, design, manage, dig, and ultimately build better.
