City of Alliance

Solar Farm Transmission Line | Alliance, NE

The integration of renewable energy sources into the existing electrical infrastructure is high on the priority list to modernizing the United States’ grid. In our region, even small communities are taking steps to improve their local electrical efficiency and reliability through the addition of solar power.

West Plains Engineering  worked with the City of Alliance in Nebraska on a new 35kV transmission line for a new solar farm. This design was a collaboration between the City of Alliance, the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska (MEAN), Western Area Power Administration (WAPA), and Sandhills Energy, LLC to develop, install and operate an 8MW solar farm to serve a portion of the City of Alliance.

The project required extensive communication, and coordination between the parties involved to properly size and design a functional photovoltaic system that could meet the needs of the City without disrupting or interfering with the existing system. This required protection and coordination controls to be implemented in multiple locations, as well as creating a viable curtailment plan for the solar generation during times of low demand. A two-mile long sub-transmission line with distribution underbuild was also designed as a part of the project to link the solar transmission field to the existing Alliance substations.