Burlington substation repairs completed ahead of schedule

We thank our customers in Burlington for their patience during repairs to our substation, and we’re happy to report the station is already back online. Fortunately, our repair work was seamless – we did not have to de-energize our system during repairs, and customers wouldn’t have noticed any changes in their service.

Crews were able to complete very complicated repairs to the substation, which was submerged in more than two feet of flood water last week, in just three days – much sooner than initially anticipated.

Before and after pictures of our substation in Burlington.

While substation repairs were being completed, Burlington customers had electricity served through mobile transformers. Though no longer necessary, the mobile units remain on site until the nearby Fox River recedes further. 

Getting the substation back on line was no small task. We had more than 50 employees dedicated to the effort. They had to replace damaged equipment and perform dozens of switching operations in our distribution network.

Unlike the light switches at your home, the switches at our substation are connected to multiple wires so we can reroute power when necessary. These redundancies are built into our system to minimize the impact of outages.

Crews had to perform more than 30 intricate switching operations to connect customers to the mobile transformers. After repairs, they had to perform all those operations again to reconnect customers to the substation. To minimize stress to our system during this delicate process, some of our larger industrial customers in the area agreed to curtail their electric use temporarily.