Energy base for Phoenix

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The city of Phoenix in the state of Ari­zona is hot, hot, hot right now! And not just because of the tem­per­a­tures in the desert city, tells Steve Spragg, RM Man­ag­er West Region: “Many res­i­dents of neigh­bor­ing states such as Cal­i­for­nia move to Phoenix as a lot of jobs are being crea­ted here. Local com­pa­nies are expand­ing their busi­ness­es and invest­ing bil­lions. Phoenix is grow­ing expo­nen­tial­ly”, Spragg reports.

So much influx and expan­sion requires a lot of elec­tric­i­ty. And it needs to flow safe­ly and reli­ably. There­fore, the Mari­co­pa sub­sta­tion, locat­ed about 20 miles south of Phoenix, under­went a mas­sive expan­sion by Spragg and his team. “Our crews spe­cial­ize in all aspects of sub­sta­tion con­struc­tion, as well as han­dling the over­all man­age­ment of the project.

That’s why we got the con­tract to build the sub­sta­tion from ground up.” Spragg’s sub­sta­tion con­struction com­pa­ny for­mer­ly known as ESS has been ful­ly inte­grat­ed into the Rein­hausen Group since 2016 and thus ben­e­fits from RM’s high-qual­i­ty equip­ment and exper­tise. Spragg and his team coor­di­nat­ed the entire project in Mari­copa, from demo­li­tion to hand­ing over the keys.

The oper­a­tors of the sub­sta­tion, Elec­tri­cal Dis­trict No. 3 (ED3 for short), have worked with Steve Spragg and his team many times, says Mike Bris­tol, Assis­tant Gen­er­al Man­ag­er at ED3: “Time and again his team has demon­strated the nec­es­sary skillset, knowl­edge, and reli­a­bil­i­ty to suc­cess­ful­ly exe­cute com­plex projects from start to fin­ish.” In order to per­form the work on the sub­sta­tion, the entire sta­tion had to be tem­porar­i­ly de-ener­gized dur­ing the off-sea­son.

After demo­li­tion, the civ­il mod­i­fi­ca­tions were com­plet­ed, to allow for the instal­la­tion of the elec­tri­cal appa­ra­tus: “The sub­sta­tion is becom­ing indis­pens­able for the region. That’s why we showed a lot of com­mit­ment and invest­ed many Sat­ur­days and man­aged to com­plete the project in about half a year.” Bris­tol is notice­ably pleased, “With their knowl­edge and exper­tise in the sub­sta­tion con­struc­tion realm, we rest­ed assured that our project would be done cor­rect­ly, and qual­i­ty would nev­er be spared. Mr. Spragg and his team have always main­tained clear and open com­mu­ni­ca­tion.” 

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From foundation to operation