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Loup Power District President/CEO Neal Suess at a January Loup board of directors meeting.

The Loup Public Power District has plans to build a new substation in Columbus to help offset loading from expected developments in town.

Land near the Columbus Sales Pavilion was purchased by Loup several years ago for the purpose of developing a Columbus Southwest distribution substation. The new substation is planned to remove loading from the Columbus Northwest substation, located near 48th Avenue and 23rd Street, and the Plant substation, located near 27th Avenue and 10th Street.

Recent housing developments and a Harrah’s Casino project planned at the old Wishbone’s site located on the northwest part of town means the new substation will be a necessity in 2023. Columbus Exposition and Racing previously indicated to the Telegram that it was optimistic the Casino development could be in place by the end of 2023.

“The Northwest substation is starting to get pretty loaded up with the casino and the new housing developments, and we're also looking at doing some things there to offload that," Loup President/CEO Neal Suess said during a June 28 board meeting. "But that plant substation, that run goes all the way out to Whitetail. What we've always been wanting to do with the Columbus Southwest sub is move Wagner’s and Whitetail and all that kind of stuff down on the south side there off of those two substations.

“The other thing is we don't have any additional room at the Columbus Northwest substation location to put anything else out there so we're kind of tied in at that point in time.”

The substation is in Loup’s 2022 construction budget as a project to be built in 2023.

Due to supply chain issues, Suess noted, a request for proposal (RFP) will be issued for the transformer that will be needed at the new substation. The RFP is needed because the cost will exceed $250,000.

“In the 2022 construction budget (for) the Columbus southwest distribution substation, we had a budget item of $750,000. We are pretty sure that the transformer alone is going to be closer to a million dollars,” Suess said. “That is strictly due to the supply chain and cost of steel going up, so we will see what the bids come in at, and we will make an analysis at that point in time.”

Asked about when Loup would receive the transformer, Suess responded that officials do not know but estimate that it could be a one-year wait time. Hypothetically, Suess said, if the matter is approved at the board’s August meeting, and the substation is built as much as possible next year, then the transformer could be set into place.

“If we waited until next year to do it, we would be into 2024-2025 before we could (do it), assuming the supply chain issues stay the way they are, and I don't see them getting any better,” Suess said.

In other Loup news, Suess said a Smart Grid Technology Planning Study from the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC) is being considered.

The study would show Loup the benefits it would see from installing a partial broadband system solely for Loup’s use. The areas it would assist in are metering, reliability/outage management, load management, power quality and distributed energy resource integration.

The cost of the study would be $30,000, with the Nebraska Public Power District paying $10,000 of that amount. There would be further costs associated with creating a broadband network if Loup decided to proceed with that, Suess said, but the information would be good for officials to have on hand.

“It would give us the ability to know what we feel like our investment to get that benefit or that opportunity. And then how do we get the rest of that funding somewhere, if we decide we want to go for this?” Loup Vice President of Corporate Services Todd Duren said.

Suess noted that there has been interest within Loup to have a broadband network set up internally.

“Our meter maintenance department has indicated that they are very interested in having some kind of fiber optic network that we can use for connecting to some of our substations to increase the efficiencies,” Suess said. “Right now, we're spending quite a bit of money on … bringing data back and forth, and the broadband fiber would really improve the benefits of our system as we have it set up now.”

Suess said the NRTC is going to be reviewed again and he would be speaking with another power entity that’s already completed the study before moving forward with it.

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Loup Power District President/CEO Neal Suess at a January Loup board of directors meeting.

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