Wisconsin Public Service Takes Outage for Distribution Line Maintenance

Wisconsin Public Service will be taking an outage on a portion of its distribution system near the city of Algoma, approximately 30 miles east of Green Bay, WI, to prepare for a major switchover in distribution feeder voltage from 7200 V to 14.4 kV. The feeder system is laid out with open points between the 7200 V Algoma Substation, and the 14.4 kV Rosiere Substation. According to Dave Walesh, Regional Electric Engineer, the interruption in service is necessary to match phases between the two feeders, ie to match A phase to A phase, B phase to B phase, and C phase to C phase, so that in the future load can be picked up by the Rosiere Substation. He says, "Right now the two circuits are not in phase and they do not need to be in phase because they are different voltages and would never be tied together. After we upgrade to 14.4 kV, this section can be used as a tie point on the feeder and therefore it needs to be in phase". He further explained, "We plan to convert small sections of the feeder at time and move the open point closer to the Algoma Substation, picking up the load from the Rosiere Substation, which is 14.4 kV. The work is scheduled for completion in June, 2007.