By DANE LILLINGSTONE
THE East Warwick power substation will receive $9.6 million towards its redevelopment as part of the 2015-2016 Queensland budget.
The $33.4 million project commenced last year and came amid calls for it to be updated to meet the future requirement of the region.
Mayor Peter Blundell said it would benefit the community.
“It’s very pleasing to see the commitment of the $9.6 million for completion of the upgrade of the substation. This should mean greater reliability and some increased capacity for power across a significant portion of the region,” he said.
“The substation has been in operation since 1954 and upgrades have occurred previously. As a result of these upgrades, there has been a demonstrable improvement in power reticulation, reliability and uniformity, and this upgrade will, no doubt, deliver further improvements along these lines.”
The new substation was energised for the first time on Thursday with all five new feeder lines successful.
Rod Rehbein from Ergon Energy said the entire process was still on track to be completed in the first quarter of 2016.
“It will supply to about 5000 people. It’s a staged process and (last week) the first customers were energised through it,” he said.
“Some customers that have been temporarily moved over to West Warwick substation and may not be moved back, but we are at the halfway mark. Work will carry on as scheduled,” Mr Rehbein said.
The old substation is no longer supplying power to customers and is scheduled to start being dismantled in early August.
