BREC Dedicates New Substation


Mineral Substation

Buckeye Rural Electric Cooperative members in the New Marshfield area should be noticing a real difference in their electric service reliability.

BREC has been upgrading and modernizing its equipment in phases, thanks to longterm planning that accommodates necessary improvements in a financially responsible manner. A new substation is the latest upgrade project to be completed.

The Mineral substation, which was built to replace an aging, overloaded substation, is also attached to a newly rebuilt
transmission system owned by American Electric Power, which provides BREC with transmission service. The new substation and transmission system combined should provide exceptional electric reliability for more than 1,200 BREC consumers.

BREC has been focused on upgrading its substations to improve “backfeeding” capabilities, as well. That means if one substation or equipment down the line has an outage, BREC can send power from another substation to those consumers whose power is out. BREC does everything it can to prevent outages — including upgrading equipment — but when an outage does happen, backfeeding gets power back on for those consumers a lot faster.

The new substation, which was built in six months for $1.7 million, will allow BREC’s new operations systems to function even better.

It’s never an easy decision to spend our members’ money, so when we do, we make sure it will both improve service reliability and make operations more efficient. Please contact us if you have any questions about your service or the investments we’re making in your cooperative.