OPD5 completes construction of new substation to support growth

OPD5 has completed construction of its new Raptor Substation in Mesquite. The substation was energized and placed into service earlier this month following approximately two years of construction.

Raptor was developed to serve Crown Holdings’ aluminum can manufacturing facility, a major new industrial customer in the area. Crown contributed to the cost of the substation, specifically the portion dedicated to its plant operations. But additional capacity was built into the substation by OPD5 in anticipation of serving future commercial and manufacturing growth.

The new substation allows Crown’s electrical demand to be served more independently, preserving capacity at other substations that support the broader Mesquite community.

“While Raptor was being built, we were feeding Crown off of another substation, which took load capacity away from that area,” said OPD5 Substation Operations Manager Keven Hansen. “That wasn’t ever a major problem. But now that Raptor is online, and Crown is moved over to it, that capacity is now available again to serve the other part of town.”

Raptor was constructed in coordination with OPD5’s new Long Drive Switchyard, completed earlier this year near the Mesquite Regional Sports and Events Complex. The switchyard provides multiple feeders from transmission lines entering the valley at that location. This allows OPD5 to distribute power more evenly among Raptor and two other substations serving a large portion of the community.

“The switchyard provides us with redundancy,” Hansen said. “It gives us flexibility so that if we need to work on either of the transmission lines, we can de-energize the line without having outages anywhere.”

Hansen said Raptor and other substation projects underway will position Mesquite to accommodate a moderate rate of growth over the next several years.

“This project, and a few others we have going right now, will allow us to balance our system loading, and more efficiently distribute power in that area,” he said.

The Raptor Substation and Long Drive Switchyard represent a combined OPD5 investment of $9.7 million. The projects were completed nearly $700,000 under budget.

Hansen said the new infrastructure provides additional resilience and flexibility while establishing capacity for continued commercial and manufacturing development in Mesquite.