Paris, TN – It has been years in the making for Tennessee Valley Authority and the Paris Board of Public Utilities and now the Eagle Creek substation serves as a second delivery point for BPU to receive power for Henry County from TVA.
Eagle Creek became energized on October 18 and BPU held a “Make the Connection” event today to commemorate the recently completed Eagle Creek substation.
Historically, Henry County’s local utility, Paris BPU, has received power from TVA at one delivery point; that all changed this October. TVA invested $23M by constructing sixteen miles of transmission lines from Murray, KY, arriving at 10455 Highway 140 E in Buchanan, the location of Eagle Creek. An investment of $3M from Paris BPU, Eagle Creek now serves as the second delivery point for Paris BPU.
Eagle Creek, a paramount attainment for both TVA and the infrastructure of Paris BPU’s system, increases the local utility’s system capacity, system reliability, and system redundancy. Eagle Creek substation will serve two distribution substations on a normal operating basis with the ability to pick up load from several other substations as needed. Because Paris BPU’s system currently features two power supplies, the system is better equipped to balance load by providing improved reliability and redundancy in the event of increased power consumption or power disruption in Henry County.
At today’s event, BPU was joined by organizations who assisted in the design and construction of the project: Fisher & Arnold, Groves Electrical, Power Services, and TVA Customer Service Manager, Brian Smith.
Paris BPU President & CEO Terry Wimberley said, “Paris BPU not only made history on October 18 when our second delivery point was put in service, but we have also made a significant infrastructure improvement to our electric grid that will benefit our customers for many years to come. The completion of this substation is only possible with the valuable partnership between Paris BPU and TVA.”
Photo: Cole Edwards and Josh McCaslin as they “Make the Connection” of Eagle Creek to the people of Henry County. (BPU photo).