Opportunity
TransCanada’s Kibby wind energy project is located in Franklin County, Maine, a rugged region with barely 30,000 residents.
Overhead collector lines for the project run along mountain ridges, where they are exposed to winds of up to 110 miles (177 kilometers) per hour and rime ice loading of up to 3.5 inches (9 cm).
Solution
Mott MacDonald modeled the transmission lines using PLS-CADD software, and provided plan and profile design drawings, plus the bill of materials and stringing charts.
In addition to these services, we added dynamic volt-ampere
reactive (VAR) compensation equipment for harmonic filtering at the expanded substation, and modified relay settings based on the results of our relay coordination study.
Outcome
The Kibby project now has a robust and resilient electrical system that can withstand wind and extreme weather conditions.