Ameren Illinois announced today it will start building a new 34-kilovolt power line that will move power through East St. Louis to the intersection of Cleveland and 27th Street where the company will break ground for a new substation later this summer. The new substation will be named in honor of Katherine Dunham and will enhance electric service reliability and meet the evolving demands of business and residential customers in the future.
Ameren Illinois will set 70 new poles – 65 wooden and five fiberglass power poles. The company will add two miles of power lines from multiple substations to the Katherine Dunham substation to strengthen the grid in the City. The new lines will create alternate pathways with other substations to re-route and deliver power if an outage occurs.
The Katherine Dunham substation will feature a 14-megavolt transformer (MVA) and its design provides room for an additional 14-MVA unit to accommodate future growth in the City. Two 34-kV power lines will serve the substation; one line will serve as a backup to improve service reliability for customers. There will be four 4-kV feeders exiting the substation, which will extend south along the west side of 27th Street and the east side of 29th Street. The feeders will extend west on Broadway Avenue and in the alley north of Missouri Avenue and tie into existing feeders to enhance reliability. Customers throughout East St. Louis will benefit from this electric grid work.
“These projects represent an important step in our long-range plans to fortify the electric delivery system and reduce outages,” said Raymond Riddle, director of Division Operations for Ameren Illinois covering St. Clair County. “The grid is evolving and we’re excited to bring these enhancements to customers in the region.”
Since 2012, Ameren Illinois has implemented hundreds of system reliability projects by adding new technology and fortifying the energy grid. As a result, reliability has improved by an average of 17 percent, saving Ameren Illinois customers an estimated $48 million a year. The utility has added more than 800 employees, and more than 1,200 Illinois-based contract workers who are supporting Ameren Illinois projects.
Ameren Illinois delivers energy to 1.2 million electric and 816,000 natural gas customers throughout central and southern Illinois.