If you ride the Canada Line out of Richmond, you may notice below, on your right-hand side, just after passing Bridgeport Station and before going over the bridge, a rather large and unsightly property with a maze of power lines and grid of electrical distribution equipment.
That’s the Kidd 2 Substation and soon, it will be largely responsible for powering Richmond, as a $35-million upgrade to its equipment will be completed this fall. The upgrades will also result in the eventual closure of another substation in the City Centre area that is now surrounded by condominiums and townhouses.
“If there’s new economic activity happening in Richmond, it’s getting its power from right here,” said BC Hydro’s Derek Collins, station planner for the Fraser Valley region. He was speaking from inside the highly-secured Kidd 2 property, while pointing to the adjacent, newly minted Parc Riviera condominium development. The large development represents just a small portion of the thousands of new homes that have been built in Richmond recently as its population is set to increase by 80,000 people by 2040.
As the two-year upgrades to Kidd 2 come to completion, looking down at the substation from above you would need a sharp eye to notice any of the changes, save for, perhaps, the two-storey building at the far back of the complex situated at No. 4 and River roads.
“Devices are getting smaller and smaller, and more economical,” said Surinder Parmar, the project’s manager.
As a result, the Kidd 2 upgrades were able to expand BC Hydro’s capabilities within the city while, at the same time, reducing its physical footprint. Although new equipment was placed on the Kidd 2 site, the substation will take over the electrical load carried by the Richmond Substation on Granville Avenue between Citation Drive and Anderson Road, forcing its eventual closure by 2018 (Richmond will then have four substations: Kidd 2, Cambie, Steveston and Sea Island).
Gas a better conduit
One advance in technology is gas insulated chambers to house distribution feeder cables. The gas allows electricity to pass through cables easier than open air and can allow for equipment to be placed closer together.
“Twenty to 30 years ago, if we were doing this project and it was air insulated, outside we would need four to five times the footprint,” said Parmar within the new building, which houses a labyrinth of thick, black power cables and digital equipment.
Once up and running, Kidd 2 will be dishing out power for the equivalent of 75,000 homes in Richmond, which includes the equivalent of 45,000 homes serviced by the City Centre facility. Kidd 2 has also been retrofitted to serve the equivalent of 200,000 homes in the future.
BC Hydro spokesperson Will Mbaho noted using the current infrastructure at Kidd 2 resulted in BC Hydro not needing to build an entirely new substation in the city, which could have cost about $70 million.
The technological advances also help save power losses. The large steel towers that loom over Kidd 2 and the Canada Line bridge carry 230,000 volts from the Peace River region. Kidd 2 redistributes that immense amount of power down to 25,000 volts, through two new transformers, into the small power lines you see along streets. From those lines, power is sent to homes at a rate of 120 volts. Through this process, a small fraction of power is lost, but advances are making that fraction less noticeable, said Parmar.
Going underground
This summer, BC Hydro will also be working on two, new underground power lines to compliment Kidd 2 — along Brideport Road from Garden City to No. 3 roads and along Garden City from Cambie Road to Alderbridge Way. Such underground lines are more difficult to install in Richmond, due to its high water table.
Installing new lines is akin to paving new roads, said Collins.
“Power systems are like traffic. You need to find bottlenecks in the grid and alleviate them,” he said, noting if too much power goes through one line as a result of poor planning, it can cause an outage.
Collins said power comes into Richmond from two nodes; at those large towers at Kidd 2 and on the south side of Richmond. This creates a loop of power within the city and while you may get frustrated by the odd outage during a storm, there may, in fact, be far more outages than you know. “We may know we have an outage, but you’ll likely be oblivious and still watching TV,” chuckled Collins.
The savings and efficiencies found at Kidd 2 come in the wake of increased electricity rates. By 2019, the average residential home will be billed about 25 per cent more per month for power, compared to 2015 rates. British Columbians are afforded some of the cheapest power in North America.
@WestcoastWood
