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wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??
3

wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

(OP)
A friend just back from Kauai was puzzled by this building he passed. Seems like a lot of power to a pretty innocuous building with no visible exhaust stacks. Zoom in behind the transformer line-up and you can see large insulators sticking out of the wall.

What do you folks think it is?

Google link to street view of it

Funny as you move one foot to the right a bunch of trucks appear. LOL. Maybe it's a teleportation node?

Keith Cress
kcress - http://www.flaminsystems.com

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

Probably a distribution substation. The 115kV (or there about) is GIS gear indoors with through the wall bushings feeding the transformers. Notice the two transmission transitions to underground. Probably has the distribution switchgear indoors as well. Put the oil filled stuff outside and everything else inside. Probably rides out storms much better than a fully outdoor substation would.

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

Looks like one of their deep well pump stations, I think they have about 15-20 of them around the island. There is a similar looking building near Barking Sands this is one of those stations.

MikeL.

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

David nailed it. There are three nearby poles that have distribution feeder getaway cables attached to each of three different circuits.

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

Might be a substation, but that's not a distribution substation, it looks like it's there to feed a pump station. Likely a bunch of large MV deep well submersible pumps fed by a double ended substation and the building off to one side is a backup generator.


" We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know." -- W. H. Auden

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

If it is a pump station, why two transmission circuits and multiple distribution circuits? For a pump station it would seem that there would either be the transmission or the distribution, but not both. I'd also expect a tank or two if it were a pumping station; need some form of surge capacity.

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

Take a look at the lines.
There is what looks like a transmission line arranged vertically on one set of poles.
There is what looks like a distribution line arranged horizontally on a second set of poles.
There does not seem to be a connection to the distribution circuit.
The transmission line is not continuous. The line from each direction enters the station.
Two feeds into a pumping station for redundancy?

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

If you move around enough, there are two transmission lines and three distribution feeders. There are five overhead feeds into/out of that facility plus an unknown number (may be zero) of underground feeds. If it was a pump station with that much redundancy, I'd expect to see an additional level redundancy in the form of emergency generator exhaust stacks. I could be wrong, but pump station just doesn't "fit" the facility as far as I can tell from limited experience with pumping facilities and lots of substation experience.

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

Storms, and salt spray... Never had to worry about salt spray. Nasty stuff for a substation to have to deal with. Going indoors seems a no-brainer in that instance.

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

Looks like links have already been provided, but my vote is substation. There are thousands of these little substations around the US alone, this one happens to be partly indoor construction.

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

(OP)
Gads Bacon! How'd you hunt that down? Amazing.

I learned a lot here. Thanks everyone for pitching in on the puzzle.

My lucky buddy stayed in a 4-1/2 star resort. It wasn't 5 star and never could be because it has no air conditioning. He said it was roasting all day and night. All power on the island is apparently engine generators running on bunker oil. He managed to get a tour of the plant and listed off about 6 different makes of engines. Some were locomotive engines and some were ship engines. Everyone was directed to do washing and major appliance use during the day when solar is present. He went to take a shower at night but the time clock that kills the water heater late at night had shut off the heat to conserve power.

Keith Cress
kcress - http://www.flaminsystems.com

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

They have a bit of hydro and solar as well.Link Link

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

I went onto assessor's website to get the address of the parcel, then Googled the address. In many counties the assessors websites list all sorts of cool info about properties.


Streetview for one of the feeder getaway down the street a bit:
https://www.google.com/maps/@22.0359533,-159.34120...

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

All available publicly, and to someone driving by. I wonder why the need to obscure the sign in Steetview. Link

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

(OP)
Bacon; You should moonlight as a private detective. Thanks for the tip.

Quote:

All available publicly, and to someone driving by. I wonder why the need to obscure the sign in Steetview. Link

I'm pretty sure all the obscuration is auto-computer done, maybe it thought that it was a license plate.

Weird! To test my theory I thought I'd google-map over to several substations in my town, that I've been too in the past, and of the five I went to two are completely wiped away!! No sign of them. How can they do that? How does a power company find they can delete moderate sized substations??

Keith Cress
kcress - http://www.flaminsystems.com

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

Can you give an example location?

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

The first one was definitely a substation at one point but appears to have been decommissioned. My guess is that it was fed at a low subtransmission or high distribution voltage and then transformed that down to say 4kV; over time the 4kV was converted to a higher distribution voltage and the need for the 4kV source disappeared.

On the second one all of the structures were gone from that dark asphalt area by August 2008 and all of the earlier images are too low resolution to know what might have been there. Again it might have been an increase in distribution voltage that eliminated the need for that location.

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

And, the 7/29/2007 image of the Hawaii location appears to have an old box structure substation at that location, but the image resolution is poor and the details can't be seen to confirm that.

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

I agree on it being an automated blur. Here's a picture of my house, there is a blur right under the pink flowering tree. Google blurred out a sign my wife puts up that says something about whatever season it is, i.e. "Summer Fun" I think when this shot was taken. No real reason to do that, but the machine doesn't discriminate. I think it helps avoid getting political or offensive signs into the Street View images.


" We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know." -- W. H. Auden

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

(OP)
Ahhh that explains it. Last time I really saw those substations was probably about 35 years ago, there after just assuming they remained. About 30 years ago the city mostly changed from 4kV to 21kV distribution. I remember that every pole with a transformer sprouted another one temporarily hung about 5 feet down from all the existing equipment.

I never realized raising the distribution voltage would allow erasure of entire substations. I would expect the network load to slowly continue rising negating any 'fade-back'. Actually this town is pretty old and not much new has been added in those 30 years. Pretty cool that worked out.

Hey, how'd you see 'way back'?

Keith Cress
kcress - http://www.flaminsystems.com

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

(OP)
LOL Cross posted Jeff!

I'd gone to all those substations to see if substation signs were all blurred or if my robot theory was more likely. That's when I was shocked to see the missing substations. Subsequently I found the substation names on two substations though one was painted in huge hand printed letters across the large wood gate and the other was blurry, but knowing what it likely said I was able to read it - not like obliterated as Google would do. Neither was a solid rebuttal to "erasing substation names". Actually your example is a better argument to "stupid robot" erasure. Thanks.

Keith Cress
kcress - http://www.flaminsystems.com

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

Google earth, not Google maps. There's a slider to pick images along a time line from the earliest to most recent. Image quality generally improves with time.

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

Google & Microsoft have had to put in lots of privacy protection algorithms based on the recent German/EU court cases requiring that customers have privacy by default instead of having to actively opt out of every single company collecting data on them. I am kind of glad Google is applying at least some sort of privacy protection outside of Germany as well.

In Google Street View you can click on the date of the photo to go back to other historical images. Kind of weird Google maps doesn't seem to offer this with the aerial view. When we switched from 4 kV to 12 kV, a whole lot of substations were eliminated.

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

Maybe the critical nature of the customer would qualify to have a substation blurred out. Would you expect the find the substation feeding area 51? Maybe look at other military bases.

And may be you should not look at those, as the gentlemen that are now knocking at my door will attest to.

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

Davidbeach,
Good point about the slider on Google Earth. I wish they would port that feature over to google maps. For a long distance perspective they have something called Google Earth Time Lapse https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/ Which is pretty cool. You can see how entire cities change over the years.
I also hate that Google maps doesn't clearly tell you when the photo was captured. It makes it very difficult sometimes. If I can't find what I'm looking for with Google maps, I try Bing maps. Their Aerial View feature, when it is clear, comes in handy.
Here is that same missing substation. In Bing maps it is still there. https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=d0b77435-19ef-41ff-...

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

(OP)
!! There it is! I wasn't hallucinating. Funny that while I remembered the transformers and switch gear I didn't remember that building.

Keith Cress
kcress - http://www.flaminsystems.com

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

(OP)
BTW it sort of looks like two pad mounted xfrmrs are in place in that one missing substation. microsub?

Keith Cress
kcress - http://www.flaminsystems.com

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

Looking at the poles on the highway near that station, I see 4 underground feeds going up the poles to the distribution lines. Appears to be one distribution line straight through with an isolation switch adjacent to the station and 3 feeds total plus another distribution line going north only with 1 feed.

The Santa Cruz location appears to be a messed up image in Google, even if it was being decommissioned or rebuilt. It does show what appears to be 2 newer pad mounts and some kind of digging being done for either new construction or to remove existing undergrounds and/or footings. The Bing birds eye view is definitely an older picture since the adjacent parking lots are not there, and the Bing aerial view is likely older too since those padmounts are not in it. Maybe it's being re-built, re-purposed or upgraded?

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

4kv can't travel very far unlike say 23kv. In fact for many POCOs their modern distribution voltage is their old sub-tranmission voltage. Its not uncommon to re-use the old sub-transmission system completely bypassing the old "intermediates". This is the cheapest and easiest way to do it. Extra circuits at that voltage are drawn out of the transmission substation to compensate for the increasing load. New subs are added (115kv-23kv) and extra transformers are added to the existing 23kv supply substations. Like this you have a "seamless" upgrade maximizing assets. No need to start from scratch.


Also keep in mind most existing 4kv substations are at least 40 years old. Many are well over 60. New 4kv construction ended in the 70s, and for a lot of POCOs before that time period. Getting rid of these stations is the best solution.

RE: wHAT iS ThiS pLaCE??

Two flat-bed cars and a van with ladders on top. That is what you expect at a substation.
Not so often seen near pump stations. The large tubes or the surge tower are a giveaway in such cases (pumping stations).

Gunnar Englund
www.gke.org
--------------------------------------
Half full - Half empty? I don't mind. It's what in it that counts.

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