Westminster just strengthened its power system

Audaciously oversized, a thing weighing 55 thousand pounds has arrived in the city of Westminster, and we’re not talking about the creature Bigfoot. City Council, in its effort to strengthen the integrity of the electrical system, funded the purchase this year of a backup 44kV transformer at its electrical substation. The current, and sole, 100kV to 44 kV step-down transformer takes the initial load from Duke’s transmission system and reduces voltage for distribution to its customers. Westminster reached out to Duke Energy and subsequently was offered the opportunity to purchase a reconditioned and tested unit at Duke’s Toddville, NC facility. Transformers, due to the critical role they place in the process of delivering “distribution” level service, need to be evaluated…., and even the oil changed periodically. Purchase price was $36 thousand. Because of Westminster’s remote location from an emergency portable transformer, it seemed wise to the city to have this redundancy. The new unit is situated and will be prepared so that in the event of major failure of the current transformer this one can be switched over within an hour thereby avoiding an extended city-wide outage.