PROJECT: ELECTRICAL SUBSTATION  

Just a few miles west of the Arizona border, right next to…(well, nothing really) …was the perfect piece of desert destined to become the next Southern Californian Edison electrical substation. With a huge push for Solar Energy fields in the open desert areas, Earth Basics was called upon to do some earth moving in yet another challenging environment. Heavy equipment needed to be hauled 5 miles from the nearest paved road to a hot desert jobsite familiar with temperatures over 115 degrees. The civil engineer’s drainage and grading plan required 1,000,000 cubic yards of earth moving, 5,900,000 sq ft of site grading and 300,000 sq ft of slope grading.

 

The Devers-Palo Verde substation was designed to handle upwards of 500 Kilovolts, to be directed back towards the Southern California energy market. Tier 3 and Tier 4 ‘quality emission standards’ were met with all of the heavy equipment used for excavating, rough grading, fine grading and general mass grading.

 

Native American Heritage Commission representatives worked alongside Earth Basics in pre-ground breaking land assessment as well as during the land development process.

The Earth Basics heavy equipment had to be encased in protective netting to avoid random bird nesting which can actually derail a project, even at this size.

 

Also, constant protective measures were taken to continually monitor the area careful not to interfere with local wildlife like the desert tortoise. (Cute little guys!) Overall this project was completed on budget and AHEAD of schedule!