April 20, 2014 – At the IEEE PES T&D Expo April 14-17 in Chicago, Sargent & Lundy discussed approaches for successfully planning and implementing a switchyard reconfiguration and new underground transmission lines.

Pleasant Prairie Switchyard Reconfiguration
Among the primary goals of utilities is replacing aging equipment. Equipment at Pleasant Prairie Switchyard was becoming increasingly unreliable and posing environmental issues. Reliability concerns with the aging equipment, requirements for upgraded protection schemes, and the desire to add an additional transmission line terminal prompted reconfiguring the existing segmented straight bus arrangement into a breaker‐and‐a‐half arrangement. This paper highlighted the key project drivers and how the project successfully increased reliability and operational flexibility, solved maintenance issues arising from old circuit breakers, and allowed for more economical transmission.

• Sargent & Lundy LLC
• American Transmission Company, LLC
• We Energies
• Henkels & McCoy

HV Underground Transmission Line Design for the Burnham Taylor Project
The expansion of the underground bulk power transmission system into downtown Chicago required balancing the need for continuity of service, risk avoidance in the design and operation of the lines and substations, while overcoming the significant obstacles in terrain and infrastructure for the design and installation of the new high voltage underground circuits. This paper presented the approach and method for the design of the transmission system and highlights the set of decisions made in the design of this HV transmission system expansion that successfully supported the project objectives to develop a reliable and robust design and minimize disruption of traffic during the installation of the conduit and cables.

• Sargent & Lundy LLC
• ComEd
• HBK Engineering, LLC