Duane Hicks
Hydro One is planning to spend $25 million building a new transformer station in Barwick, which will improve the reliability and provide more capacity for communities between Rainy River and Fort Frances.
Construction on the new station is slated to start early this month, with the station to be in-service by next August.
Hydro One spokesperson Tiziana Baccega Rosa said components of the Fort Frances transformer station are nearing end-of-life and a new station is required to serve customers west of town.
But she said this does not mean the entire transformer station here is being shut down.
“It will just be parts of it that will be decommissioned,” Baccega Rosa noted.
“So part of it will continue to be in-service. . . . The part that’s currently servicing [the area between Fort Frances and Rainy River] will be decommissioned once this new station goes on-line,” she explained.
This means the change will not have any negative impact on the Fort Frances Power Corp., which also uses the power station here.
“We haven’t been notified this will impact us negatively in any way,” FFPC CEO and president Joerg Ruppenstein stressed last week.
“That station is multi-purpose and basically services a large portion of the district,” he noted.
“So they’re making changes to the district portion of the station but not to the portion that actually services us.”
Hydro One, meanwhile, said investing in the local transmission system “will strengthen reliability to both residential and commercial customers.”
“Hydro One is committed to delivering reliable electricity to its customers and this investment to the transmission system allows us to do this,” Hydro One project manager Arnold Brakel said in a press release last week.
“By building a new station in the Township of Chapple, shorter spans of 44 kV power lines will connect customers to our system, ultimately improving the reliability of their power supply,” he remarked.
Baccega Rosa noted another benefit of the new station is “providing more capacity if there’s future growth in the area.”
Hydro One said an Environmental Study Report (ESR) was completed and the project has received all of the required approvals for construction to begin.
The new transformer station will consist of two 115,000/44,000 volt transformers.
It will occupy a 150-metre by 150-metre site in Barwick, located north of Highway 11 and west of Westover Road.
