Pacific Gas & Electric is currently in the process of soliciting public input and promoting a proposed South Santa Clara County electricity infrastructure expansion project that would bring a new transmission substation to the region by 2021.
The utility company, which provides natural gas and electricity service to 16 million northern California customers, held a series of open house meetings in South County recently to present information and allow residents to ask questions and submit comments.
The company has not identified a preferred location for the new substation; nor has the utility provider identified an exact route for new transmission lines that would connect the new substation to facilities to the north and south.
The last open house took place Sept. 28 at the Morgan Hill Community Center. Two previous sessions took place in Gilroy and San Martin. The trio of meetings was sparsely attended, but the public can continue to provide feedback to PG&E via email, phone or the internet.
The PG&E project, known as South County Power Connect, would bring a new substation and two new transmission lines to the region, in order to strengthen the system’s reliability for 43,000 customers in south San Jose, Morgan Hill, San Martin and Gilroy, according to PG&E officials.
PG&E representatives at the Sept. 28 open house said the new substation would be similar in size to the Metcalf facility next to U.S. 101 north of Morgan Hill. However, on follow-up after the meeting, PG&E spokeswoman Mayra Tostado said the facility would not be quite that size.
Information at the Morgan Hill open house—where more than a dozen PG&E staff and contractors stood by in front of poster-sized maps, charts and other informational graphics—noted that potential substation sites “will be located on land relatively close to the existing Morgan Hill-Llagas 115kV transmission line,” the inactive Green Valley transmission line and the 230kV Metcalf-Moss Landing line. All of these transmission lines run west of town, with the Metcalf route carrying the highest electrical capacity.
A June 2014 report from PG&E, in which the utility company presented a “representative” project in order to estimate the cost, proposes a new “Spring substation” to be built west of the existing West Main Avenue site. PG&E spokeswoman Mayra Tostado noted that site was hypothetical, though when it was proposed it met PG&E’s requirements for the South County expansion.
“We are currently working with the local community to identify other potential sites that meet this criteria and can loop into the existing lines in the area while providing reliable, affordable energy” to South County customers, Tostado said.
South County Power Connect is intended to add “redundancy” to the system in case of a failure of the Metcalf substation to the north is rendered inoperable by a natural disaster, plane crash, fire or vandalism, according to PG&E representatives.
“(The project) will reduce the risk of power outages to local area customers by providing an additional transmission source to help serve the area,” Tostado said. “South County Power Connect will also provide additional system capacity to help meet the future power needs as the area grows, which will eliminate potential equipment overload problems in the future.”
Notably, a gunfire attack on the Metcalf facility in April 2013 resulted in damages to 17 transformers and a spill of 52,000 gallons of oil at the site. Though the attack did not result in any power outages, a vandal or vandals used firearms to cause the $15 million worth of damages, according to authorities. In response, PG&E has committed to upgrading security at Metcalf and other substations it owns.
Police have not identified or arrested any suspects in relation to the 2013 vandalism.
Jeff Pedersen was one of only a handful of interested Morgan Hill residents who attended the Sept. 28 open house. He suggested that PG&E, working with the city, should consider tying any new substation into the existing Main Avenue facility in coordination with City Hall’s long proposed effort to extend Santa Teresa Boulevard through the west side of downtown. That road project, which has been on the books for decades, currently has no development timeline or funding source.
“I’m very curious” about the South County Power Connect project, Pedersen said. “We all rely on electricity, and I’m interested in what they’re proposing and what the basis of the need is.”
PG&E’s West Main Avenue facility is a “distribution substation,” which is smaller and carries less capacity than the transmission substation proposed for 2021, according to information presented at the open house.
A substation is essentially a hub for the delivery of electricity converted from natural and renewable resources, PG&E staff explained. Electricity is stored at the facilities before being distributed to multiple points varying distances from the substations.
The new South County facilities’ locations will ultimately be determined by the California Public Utilities Commission, which has the authority to approve or deny the project as a whole.
Following PG&E’s current public outreach period—by 2017—the company plans to present a short list of “alternative locations” for the substation and transmission lines, according to Tostado. Another set of public workshops will follow, and then the project will be submitted to the CPUC for review by 2019. After an environmental study that will consider the proposal’s impact on wildlife habitat, agriculture, noise, traffic, air quality, cultural resources and other aspects of the land, CPUC will conduct more public review.
PG&E hopes to complete the project by May 2021 if the CPUC approves it, according to Tostado.
The total cost of the project is expected to be $35 million to $45 million, according to the California Independent System Operator. That cost will be passed on to PG&E’s ratepayers statewide, at an average additional price of ¢1 per month per customer, Tostado added.
Anyone who did not attend the open houses but would like to know more about the project can visit pge.com/southcountypc. Questions and comments can be submitted by phone at (888) 743-1045, or by email at
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