Boost for South Wales Power Network

Over £650,000 has been invested on a major initiative to boost power supplies in Bridgend.

WPD engineers Luke Thomas and Gareth Jones carrying out wiring modifications to an 11kV automated circuit breaker at the primary substation in Bridgend. 

As the electricity distributor for the region, we are committed to investing in our network to further improve supply reliability and customer service levels.  

The improvement work to upgrade and reinforce our electricity network has recently been completed and will benefit the 7,000 customers who are fed from a primary substation site on the Bridgend Trading estate in Brackla.

The initiative means that industrial, commercial and residential customers in the area will receive an even more resilient network. It will also further safeguard network security and resilience into the future.

Work has involved replacing two 33/11kV transformers – Brackla primary substation currently provides supplies to customers via a network of 86 small substations. 

The project has provided some interesting engineering challenges particularly as the substation is located on a single track access road and is sandwiched between homes and the main Swansea to London railway line. 

Project Engineer Luke Thomas, who managed the scheme said: “We used specialist heavy goods vehicles to deliver the new transformers and the equipment to site which then had to be rolled into position on skids. For safety reasons we weren’t able to use cranes because of the proximity to the railway line. 

“We also installed new transformer plinths to accommodate sound enclosures which restricted our working area quite a bit, and we had to identify and divert 11kV feeders and remove old abandoned cables from the site.” 

The project forms part of our commitment to provide a consistently high level of service to customers. We are investing more than £7.1 billion on our electricity network by 2023.