Breathing New Life into an Old Substation

We've talked alot about the fact that we have a new power station in Mayo (Mayo B). However you may not know that we've devoted a lot of time over the last two years refurbishing our Mayo substation. The work is almost complete; the substation should be on-line in about a month or so.

Substations are a critial part of our infrastructure. They transform voltage from high to low, or from low to high so that generated power can be properly routed to where it is needed. Think of them as traffic circles for electricity. In this case, all the power coming from both our Mayo A and Mayo B hydro facilities will be routed so that it can be transmitted to any and all communities connected to the Yukon grid.

Our Mayo substation was at the end of its life and needed upgrading, especially with Mayo B online.

Most of the outside structural and electrical work is done, and we are just waiting for the new control building to arrive. It should be on site within the next week or two.

Below are a couple of photos of the substation construction. Photo credit: F & M Installations, the major contractor on this project.

 Other major work taking place at our Mayo facilities includes refurbishing the spillway gates at the Wareham Lake dam (scheduled for completion by late October) and installing a new headgate (also scheduled for completion in October). The spillway gates control the release of water from a dam and a headgate controls the flow of water to a hydro generator.

The aim of most of the work being done in Mayo is to improve reliability and reduce the number of outages.