Centerville distribution conversion

City of Centerville Distribution Conversion

  • This project converted the entire city of Centerville, South Dakota, from 4 kV to 13.8 kV. It included upgrades to distribution equipment, framing, and poles throughout the city.
  • This project spanned five months and included work on nearly every pole in the city of Centerville. Several insulators, cross arms, poles, and transformers were upgraded. In the final conversion, all the transformers and cutouts needed to be touched for their final conversion during a six-hour outage that left the town entirely without power.
  • Due to this project involving a complete rebuild of the substation by Xcel Energy, the city endured three lengthy outages, leaving them without power for several hours. A mobile substation was utilized to handle the load while the city’s substation was upgraded to 13.8 kV.
  • In addition to the big outages, this project required the coordination of several customer outages. Each time a transformer was replaced or relocated to a different pole, Hooper crews would coordinate the outages for the customers affected. In order to keep some local business operational, this meant working off hours to get the job done.
  • In addition to the electrical equipment in the city being outdated, the driving factor in the voltage increase was the city’s grain elevator. In order to perform upgrades to the elevator, the system had to be upgraded. Hooper was also contracted to perform the underground electrical installation around the city’s grain elevator. This additional work was added late in the project schedule.