Location: Elk Hills, Tupman, California, USA

Falcon Steel’s Contribution

Falcon Steel America was invited to participate in the construction of the Midway—Elk Hills 230/115kV Substation that consisted of approximately 200 tons of steel.

Working in close collaboration with the partner-engineering firm, located in Georgia, Falcon Steel America was able to design, fabricate, inspect and deliver all structures associated with this project eight weeks after receipt of order.

The high side steel designed by Falcon Steel America consisted of (1) 230kV A-Frame and (4) 115kV H-Frame Structures with various types of low side steel support structures.

Project Description

Occidental of Elk Hills (OEHI), located in Tupman, which operates the Elk Hills oil field, planned to improve the reliability of its electricity supply by converting from the current PG&E 115kV system to the PG&E 230 kV System. OEHI was being serviced off the Midway-Taft 115kV Line.

PG&E received a request from Oxy to transition its service point from 115kV to its new 230/115kV substation. In addition, Oxy was looking to increase its demand to 150 MW in 2010 and increase its level of service reliability. This conversion was scheduled for completed by late 2010.

The conversion project include a new substation on OEHI property, modifications to the Elk Hills Power Switchyard within the power plant premises, and a short transmission line to connect the two. These modifications allowed OEHI access to the existing 230 kV transmission line from Elk Hills Power (EHP) to PG&E Midway Substation, in Buttonwillow.

The work to be done in the EHP Switchyard was planned to take place during the power plant’s downtime for routine maintenance. This was done in two phases in order to best coordinate field construction with material deliveries and minimize impact on EHP operations.

Phase 1 took advantage of the EHP maintenance outage starting April 1, 2009 and ending on May 10, 2009, in order to install structures and modify bus work. Phase 2 was performed during a maintenance outage to install a 230 kV breaker with associated control equipment and was completed in the summer of 2010.