A tougher grid: Cleco puts up storm-hardened transmission line

Cleco is working on the last link in a $300 million, decade-long project designed to make the region’s electrical grid stronger and more resistant to hurricanes.
Massive steel transmission towers that soar over conventional wooden utility poles are showing up from west of Franklin, near the Gulf Craft and Metal Shark shipyards, to near Garden City. They’ll eventually carry power from a new substation in Baldwin to Bayou Vista.
The first phase of the project carries electricity from Iberia Parish to Baldwin. Another phase, completed in 2019, constructed a similarly storm-hardened transmission line between Amelia and Bayou Vista.
The Baldwin-Bayou Vista stretch, as with the Amelia-Bayou Vista section, is designed to withstand wind of up to 120 mph, said Doug Gates, Cleco’s distribution and transmission engineer on the most recent part of the project.
Most of the tubular transmission poles are 80-110 feet tall. Some of the poles that cross waterways are 130-140 feet high.
When the poles are erected, the metal bars that extend parallel to the earth have pulleys attached. The pulleys will be used to hoist the transmission lines in place.
Glass insulators also hang from the poles. The insulators are big ones.
The Baldwin substation is designed for 230 kilovolts, handling about twice the voltage of a normal substation.
One major feature of the new line is that it doesn't replace an existing line. Gates said it represents new capacity.
The Amelia-Bayou Vista portion of the project covered 12 miles and crossed four waterways. Most of the 101 poles required for that section were also 80-110 feet high, but crossing the Atchafalaya River required poles 239 feet high, according to a Cleco news release. And the bases for some of the poles weighed 26 tons.
“This project is unique as the line crosses four major waterways, meaning we’re relying extensively on helicopters and marsh equipment to get our work done,” said Lance Speer, Cleco senior engineer and construction manager for Amelia-Bayou Vista project, in a Cleco press release. “Included in that terrain are two islands, Avoca Island and Bateman Island, which have no road access.”
Across the country, an upgraded, more resilient and more advanced electrical grid has become a national priority.
Congress made the nation’s electricity distribution system the target of modernization with Title XIII of the Energy Security and Independence Act in 2007.
Congress later allocated $8 billion for improvements to the system. The Cleco project was not funded by the federal government.
“Our electric infrastructure is aging and it is being pushed to do more than it was originally designed to do,” the U.S. Department of Energy says on its website. “Modernizing the grid to make it ‘smarter’ and more resilient through the use of cutting-edge technologies, equipment, and controls that communicate and work together to deliver electricity more reliably and efficiently can greatly reduce the frequency and duration of power outages, reduce storm impacts, and restore service faster when outages occur.
“Consumers can better manage their own energy consumption and costs because they have easier access to their own data. Utilities also benefit from a modernized grid, including improved security, reduced peak loads, increased integration of renewables, and lower operational costs.”