Full Power to the Base
By SMECO
Leading Edge
As with much of the infrastructure at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, the electrical grid was built piecemeal out of necessity and not necessarily with permanence in mind.
That began to change two years ago when Pax River contracted Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative to rebuild and maintain the base’s electrical infrastructure. As of Aug. 1, SMECO’s second anniversary of working with the base, the Cooperative as completed several projects that aim to bring the base’s grid into the 21st Century.
In March, SMECO began its first reconstruction project, rebuilding the overhead distribution lines along Buse and Cuddihy Roads. Crews converted about a mile of the distribution line from 4,160 volts to 13,800 volts. The conversion brought the lines closer to compliance with SMECO’s standards for its electric system and helped maintain a consistent distribution voltage within Pax River.
SMECO also redesigned the overhead power line on Bundy Road to be a buried line running at the new, higher voltage.
SMECO also completed a building vault reconstruction project, moving transformers housed within four buildings to outside locations. For the four buildings, SMECO installed new exterior transformers and energized them and then decommission the old transformers during a scheduled outage.
SMECO is also working built 11 new transformer vaults that serve three of the base’s hangars as well as the catapult launching and arresting gear used for testing.
SMECO began installing smart meters at Navy facilities in March. As part of the privatization agreement with Pax River, SMECO will convert all existing meters at the base to smart meters. In addition, more than 200 existing electric services, which have never been metered, are being converted. Over the years, the Navy meters at the base were installed according to different specifications, and standards were inconsistent. Chuck Stone, Lloyd Goble, and personnel from SMECO’s meter division have been responsible for making the system compliant with SMECO’s standards.
SMECO has completed installing Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition equipment at Pax River Substations One and Two and plans to install SCADA equipment at the two remaining substations.
