These projects carried very aggressive timelines and required design work commence as soon as possible. Engineering design included replacement of existing QEI SCADA remote terminal units (RTUs) and the existing Mehta-Tech digital fault recorders (DFRs) at the Sidney and Stegall 345kV substations. Additional engineering included replacement of protective relays and power-line carrier transmitter/receivers at the six terminals of the Laramie River to Sidney, Sidney to Stegall, and Stegall to Laramie River 345kV transmission lines.
Engineering and construction were originally to be completed in two phases. The first phase was engineering and construction of the two SCADA RTU replacements and Mehta-Tech digital fault recorder replacements. These replacements were to be completed without taking any transmission line outages. Engineering was to begin immediately upon project award followed by construction. The second phase of the project was to replace the six protective relay sets. Engineering was to begin upon completion of Phase 1 installation and check-out, and after the “issued for construction” drawings were converted to as-built drawings. This would allow sufficient time for design of the protective relay replacement drawings prior to the line outages in the spring of 2015.
Ulteig engineers had a unique idea that ultimately transformed the engineering and construction delivery of the project and better positioned the client to be successful in completing the line relay replacements within the scheduled six-week outage. The shift in project delivery was to complete both Phase 1 and 2 simultaneously. The proposal was to design and install all new relay control panels fitted with the necessary components per substation. The new panels were designed to allow field technicians to abandon a majority of the existing panels and equipment in place and reduce the amount of demolition and panel connections to the existing panels. This allowed for all of the engineering and panels to be procured in the fall/winter of 2014 and installed and functionally tested in the winter of 2015. As a result, a great deal of time was saved during the scheduled outage by not having to mount new components in existing panels. Also, the time consuming demolition of existing relay control panels and equipment along with could then be completed after the substations have been energized as a majority of the components in the panels had been obsolete.
These projects demonstrated Ulteig’s ability to provide value added engineering solutions to our client and our capacity to complete engineering design work on time and with a high degree of accuracy.
