February 21, 2008
Getting Power to Alamo Industrial Park

Photo by Dave Maxwell Looking east at land for Alamo Industrial Park.

By Dave Maxwell, Staff Writer

Mick Lloyd, General Manager, of the Lincoln County Power District (LCPD), said the company’s engineers in Salt Lake City, have been reviewing the situation of “just what Alamo has to do to shift their loads from the south substation to the north substation to be able to put the Steel Tech load on the south substation.” At the regular monthly meetings of the LCPD Lloyd has discussed providing power to the Alamo Industrial Park land, where Steel Tech Corporation of Corona, California, is interested in building a plant. Steel Tech wants to buy 24 acres of the 228-acres that comprise the Industrial Park.

Providing electric power to the site has been a matter of concern and disagreement between Alamo Power District #3, LCPD, and the County Commission for several months.

Alamo Power General Manager, Doug Miller, said they have been looking at the possibility of “shifting a little more of the town load on the north substation and relieve some load on the south substation to provide enough power to the Industrial Park.”

While providing power for Steel Tech at their proposed manufacturing plant, it would also greatly reduce any future growth in Alamo because the current 25KV transmission lines would not be adequate to handle extra power. Miller says what is needed is a new 69KV line to service the valley. “We can increase our capacity some by using voltage regulators,” Miller said, “but it would not allow for much more.”

At the same time, Lincoln County Power District is approaching their own system capacity and needs further upgrades to supply Alamo Power with extra electricity.

Both LCPD and the County Commissioners are looking at what can be done to obtain the money needed to make the power upgrades.