Cookeville Electric Preparing For Future, Additional Southeastern Substation

A new substation in Cookeville’s southeastern corner may be rising on the agenda for Cookeville Electric.

Cookeville Electric Director Carl Haney said the project is on the Electric Department’s list of long-term plans but could see an accelerated timeline with industrial growth in the region. Haney said the department wants to keep all of its substations below 60 percent capacity in case one were to go down.

“If land became available or if industry or something went in out in the southeast, we would look at our loads then on our capacities,” Haney said. “We just know that the two substations that serve out in that area right now, they’re getting close to that 60 percent.”

Several years ago, the department built the southwestern substation which Haney said still has tremendous available capacity. Haney said the current substations have the capacity to serve residential growth in the southeast.

Haney said if loads see increased demand from major infrastructure, those substations could be pushed beyond their limit.

“It would have to be some pretty big loads that were looking to come in there or you get some of those small ones and just say, “Okay, it’s time to go ahead and build one,” so we would just monitor it in that way,” Haney said.

Haney said if substations are above 60 percent of capacity, station age becomes a bigger concern. Haney said natural disasters like the tornado in 2020 and potential winter storms also make the substations vulnerable. Haney said neighboring stations have to be relied upon to serve affected areas by having extra capacity.

“When anything like that happens, we just want to make sure that we can keep the lights on either through that substation or one nearby,” Haney said. “We just want that redundancy so we can keep the lights on no matter what happens.”

Haney said no major projects are likely to begin until the Cane Creek substation is finished in the spring.

“We look at how Cookeville has been growing over the last five and 10 and 15 years, we watch that and we project that out as well,” Haney said. “We also look and see what industry or commercial type business may be coming in as well.”