PROJECT
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Jasper Interconnection Project
ATCO’s Jasper Interconnection Project was a complex construction project that connected the Municipality of Jasper to the Alberta electrical grid, removing their dependency on diesel and natural gas from an isolated generating station. ATCO installed one substation, 468 structures, and 44 km of tree wire. The tree wire was adapted to be used at a 69-kV level—the first of its kind in North America—thereby eliminating flashovers and reducing the risk of wildfires. To mitigate the danger of trees falling on the line and causing outages, ATCO constructed a prototype to simulate controlled tree impacts to validate the integrity of the line design and its ability to withstand these occurrences.
Potential damage was also mitigated by using ATCO’s compact line design, utilizing tree wire conductor, and reinforcing poles and insulators. As a result, this project and the decommissioning of the diesel and natural gas power plant, 40,077 tonnes of CO2 emissions were removed from the atmosphere. The environmental impacts were even further reduced by negating the need to transport and store large volumes of diesel. The Jasper Interconnection Project provided customers with the option to purchase electricity from clean, renewable energy sources.
The impact to the land was made minimal by routing over existing utilities wherever possible and running parallel to a major pipeline corridor for much of the line route. Working with the municipality was key to prevent damage during construction.
CoE 2020: Electricity Innovation • Canadian Electricity association
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