City puts $3.5 million into new Tech Park substation

Gastonia leaders believe they have set the table for future success in their primary industrial park by investing in hardware that better powers it.

City Council members joined municipal staff and other local officials last month in dedicating a new electric substation at the Gastonia Technology Park. The infrastructure wasn’t cheap, bringing a tab of $3.5 million. But supporters of the investment say it will pay off many times over in the years to come.

Gastonia Public Utilities Director Joe Albright, who oversees the city’s electric division, said the complex’s limitations when looking to the horizon have been simple.

“We needed increased power capacity to serve the growing number of businesses at the Tech Park,” he said.

Expansion prep

The issue is that city and county leaders are moving ahead aggressively with plans to expand the park north of Dallas-Bessemer City Road, putting to use land that once hosted and surrounded the Apple Creek Golf Course.

“This addition will also provide capacity to serve new industrial customers at the Apple Creek property,” he said of the new investment.

The city-owned and operated substation is located behind CTL Packaging USA. It is served by a 100,000-volt transmission line fed from the Duke Energy power system. And it supplies up to 40 megawatts, which is enough electricity to power a small city, Albright said.

The infrastructure will also provide a redundant source of electricity for the north Gastonia area, including the industry-heavy Tulip Drive corridor where customers such as Freightliner and Stabilus are located. It will additionally relieve the industrial load on the Rankin Lake substation, which currently serves those industries.

Serving all growth

Beyond all that, Albright said the new substation will support residential growth in the area and provide sufficient power for new companies recruited to the proposed industrial park planned next door to the Tech Park.

“Without the new substation, we wouldn’t be as confident that we could provide electricity for the new park,” Gastonia Electric Division Manager Ron Gaff.

The Gastonia TechPark is already equipped with a strong backup power system, with four large generators that provide eight megawatts of stand-by power to industrial tenants. The ElectriCities redundant power system ensures that emergency electric power is restored within 30 seconds of any outage.

You can reach Michael Barrett at 704-869-1826 or on Twitter @GazetteMike.