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Updated: December 23, 2024

Versant’s new switching station seeks to make service more reliable in the Orono market

A crane is at a construction site with a person standing by. Photo / Courtesy Versant A crane operator places the final piece of the site's new control house.

Bangor-based utility company Versant Power is developing a system configuration focused on the Orono and Milford areas, with a goal to make service more reliable for thousands of customers in about 20 towns from Orono to Lowell.

The configuration, called a switching station, is very similar to a substation, though it doesn't step energy up or down. 

The purpose of a switching station is to allow multiple sources of power to be brought into a single location to transfer power from one source to another in an outage situation. In this case, the switching will be done automatically and, depending on the location of a problem, will result in fewer customers being affected rather than all customers, according to a news release.

“You can think of rerouting power through a switching station like a train switching tracks to take a different route,” said Brian Green, the project’s manager. “If there’s a tree on a line in one direction, power can be fed from a different way while crews work to make repairs.”

The switching station will have two lines sourced from Graham substation in Veazie. One comes directly from the substation and the other comes to the switching station through the University of Maine and Orono substations. There will be two additional lines leaving the switching station that carry power to the Milford area, which will allow the two source lines from Veazie options to serve the load.

“Since a switching station automatically feeds power from another source, customers won’t need to wait for crews to patrol the line and find the source of the outage.” said Green. 

The new configuration is expected to be completed  in the summer of 2025 and is part of a multi-year plan designed to minimize interruptions in the area after a spate of outages in 2021. 

Additional work is planned over the next few years, including installing remotely controlled equipment at the university and additional protection devices at the Orono substation.

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