A New 480 VAC Substation

Bill Fritz and Tom Atkinson
Photos by Brad Bull (Physical Plant)

When constructed in 1963, the Chemistry Building was at the cutting edge of modern laboratory design. As a consequence of the nature and size of the building, a large amount of energy is needed to operate the elevators, heating, ventilation, air-conditioning (HVAC) (including the approximately 300 fume hoods), and lights to say nothing of the scientific instrumentation and computers. This power was delivered to the building as three phases of 4160 VAC from the MSU power grid. This was achieved with cables contained in buried duct lines. This service was delivered to a substation, a large room in the southwest side of the sub-basement. The substation stepped the high voltage down to the 480, 240, and 120 VAC needed to run the equipment contained in the building.

Over the last thirty years the nature of the electrical needs and of the building had changed. A major renovation of the HVAC including the fume hoods was achieved in 1993-1996. The standards for air quality and, hence, fume hoods became more rigorous. In addition, the technology of electrical power distribution evolved. For these and other reasons, a $1.9M upgrade of the electrical service to 13200 VAC and higher capacity was implemented in 1997-98. This project also provided the opportunity to install a natural gas fueled generator that could provide emergency power to a few essential services within the building.

To handle the new equipment associated with the upgrade a major increase in the size of the substation was required. As with the HVAC renovation in 1993-96, the project was to be done while the building was in operation (Can you imagine having to shut down the Chemistry building for 6-9 months?). Thus, some additional space was also needed for flexibility in order to make the upgrade in-situ. The modification required the construction of a new two-story room adjacent to the existing substation. The new structure was placed immediately next to the south side, i. e. outside the existing footprint, of the building and adjacent to the existing substation.

The new structure had to be placed where existing steam, gas, communication, and electrical service were brought into the building. As can be seen in the pictures at the end of this article, constructing the new facility without requiring significant outages of these services was a challenge.

The new structure, while below grade, would extend into the driveway servicing the loading dock. Thus, the excavation and construction of the structure itself required that the driveway to and the loading dock be closed. Luckily, enough room was left to allow Praxair to make the 5 to 6 liquid nitrogen deliveries per week. Even so, arrangements had to be made to insure that these deliveries occurred outside of the hours when the construction work was being done. All deliveries of large items, e. g. the annual large orders of chemical supplies and major instrumentation, were scheduled to not occur during the 3-4 months required for construction of the structure. Regular deliveries were made through the main (north) and west entrances to the building.

Construction began with excavation after the close of the academic year in May 1997. The structure was completed and use of the loading dock area restored in September of 1997. Final cut over to the new service occurred in February 1998. There were a few short outages of power to parts of building during the construction. The final cut over required interruption of power for about 16 hours. To accommodate this, the building was completely closed one Saturday in February.

A pictorial history of the project follows. The 18 pictures are displayed at two resolutions. A low resolution set (27K to 31K each) is shown by default. Click on each picture to see a higher resolution version (100K to 150K each).

Pictorial History of the Sub Station Project