A bid has been approved to help avoid electrical outages in Sparta.
Sparta Electric and Caney Fork Electric will split the $298,900 price tag on the substation switches. Sparta Electric Utilities Manager Belva Bess said the switches will help keep residents up and running during maintenance.
“Currently at the time without these switches, anytime they have to do maintenance on theirs everyone who feeds from that substation will have to be out,” Bess said. “We only have the one substation so we don’t have an opportunity to back feed to another one, so therefore these switches will let us kill just the part they’re working on and still keep us on and services still going.”
Bess said the next step is engineers building the substation switches. The winning bid comes from Patterson & Dewar Engineers in Gallatin, Tennessee.
The switches will be installed by Sparta Electric Department employees.