Originally established in the early 1800s from part of nearby Newark, the Essex County town of Orange, N.J., sports a population of nearly 35,000 residents and encompasses a bevy of parks, museums, businesses, restaurants, performing arts venues, seasonal festivals and other cultural attractions.

With the town’s population growing and a wealth of activities continuing to place additional demands on the area’s electric grid, local utility PSE&G recently opted to construct a new, more efficient and higher-capacity substation to replace the one built more than 75 years ago in the Valley Arts District of Orange Heights. 

And thanks to the utility’s reliance on the expertise of full-­service electrical contractor SM Electric Group Inc., Rahway, N.J., the result has been a high-performing new substation that fulfills a functional purpose and enhances the appeal of the neighborhood.

“SM Electric is over 80 years old and employs anywhere from 80–200 people,” shared Brian Schwerdt, project manager for SM Electric Group, an MBE company. “We specialize in heavy industrial, utility and wireless tower work and have completed projects from Virginia to Maine, but 90% of our work is performed in New Jersey and we serve the entire state.”

According to Schwerdt, the Orange Heights Substation job involved two projects on the same site.

230-kV control racks

“The first was a 230-kV/69-kV gas insulated switchgear (GIS) project with multiple 230-kV switches going outboard. From that, one circuit went out to a 69-kV transformer and then turned into the utility’s Energy Strong 2 project,” Schwerdt said. “Following the damage done to our area by Superstorm Sandy in 2012, the utility’s original Energy Strong projects oversaw the elevation of all electrical equipment above flood levels to enhance system reliability in the face of hurricanes and other natural disasters. PSE&G’s Energy Strong Phase 2 projects started in 2022, and we were more involved with distribution down to the pole level.”

Following a formal bid process for the “Substation/Interconnection PSE&G Orange Heights Substation” project in 2022, “we were successfully awarded the project out of five contractors in the running,” Schwerdt said.

“The property we worked on originally housed a coal and propane business, but PSE&G acquired the property and demolished the existing buildings, so there was a fresh slate of underground contracting completed and a new building constructed,” said Andy Forst, project manager at SM Electric. “We were responsible for the electrical fit-out, including all lighting, gear, electrical equipment, outlets, HVAC, fire alarms, battery backup system, and control and DC battery racks. We also installed the external 230-kV transformer, four 69-kV to 4,000-kV transformers, switchgear and feeder rows.” 

Specifically, as a 230-kV/69-kV facility, “the project features yard 230-kV and 69-kV transformers, feeder row line-ups, center aisle switchgear, interior GIS at 230 kV and 69 kV, and a yard control room,” Forst said. “The innovative design additionally features the elevation of all yard equipment above New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection flood hazard storm elevation requirements to help achieve a desired level of environmental sustainability and disaster preparedness.”

“There was also a lot of wire involved in this job,” he said. “We installed 105 control racks and pulled more than 4,000 control cables into the control room alone. With all of the GIS equipment that was also installed, we had a lot of crew members on the job, and there was a big push on this part of the project.”

Challenges Abound

While some 35 crew members from SM Electric arrived on-site to start the first phase of the job in January 2023, Forst said that a number of circumstances made working in and around the block-long, 2½-story, high-ceiling substation particularly challenging.

The first issue was the building’s location within a congested urban setting.

With two accesses from the main street, “the block that this substation occupies is surrounded by small side streets filled with apartment buildings, churches, small businesses and the town’s New Jersey Transit train station, so there were lot of people and activities happening all around,” Forst said.

Gas insulated switchgear control cabinets

The new substation replaced a smaller, outdated structure from the 1940s–1950s located a block away. 

“All of our work was done in the tight constraints of a busy urban setting, with adjoining businesses and residences right on our property line and our site bound on the east side by New Jersey Transit’s rail lines.

“While bidding for the job occurred in July 2022, the project start was delayed to January 2023 as property issues got resolved, but the job was still expected to be completed by the end of that year. So we were working within an extremely compressed schedule, which essentially consolidated an otherwise 1½-year job into 1 year,” Forst said, who noted that residual pandemic-era supply chain issues only compounded the situation.

“Switchgear and other large equipment was delayed, which created delivery and scheduling issues for our team,” Forst said. “While PSE&G provided all of the equipment for the project, our plans involved scheduling and prepping that equipment to have it ready up to a certain point, and the delays left our team dealing with a lot of stops and starts. Ultimately, our colleagues at PSE&G ended up diverting some switchgear earmarked for another project of theirs that was starting up later over to our project instead to help us meet our schedule. We also experienced some delays on smaller breakers, but we found some workarounds and swapped things out while waiting for official material to arrive.”

Crowding on the job site was another matter.

“In addition to our dozens of electricians, we were working alongside subcontractors doing civil work, site work and other construction,” said Alan Vilchock, SM Electric’s general foreman on the job. “Everyone was working on top of each other in the same spot at the same time on a very tight schedule, which made teamwork and collaboration essential.”

The bottom line? “We were often working 10-hour workdays, six to seven days a week to meet our goal of energizing distribution circuits by the end of the year,” Vilchock said. 

Finally, additional mandates regarding the look and feel of the substation made the project anything but typical for the team.

“Per the city of Orange Planning Board’s requirements, construction of the substation incorporated a 50-foot-high precast concrete perimeter wall on three sides,” Forst said. “Featuring faux windows and doors as well as architectural lighting that we installed, the wall was made to look like a city block, complete with professional murals and programmable accent lighting, both for safety and security as well as for aesthetics in this Arts District, such that residents would never know it was a substation.”

“Substations are a unique scope of work and we’ve done a lot of them,” he said, “but this was among the first we’ve done with precast walls like that.”

The SM Electric crew did catch a few breaks on the project.

For example, while the team was exposed to the elements in the early months of the job, “it was luckily a light winter, so the weather wasn’t a major issue,” Vilchock said. “And we were past the pandemic-era protocols of social distancing and temperature checks at that point, so we just had to notify the client of any COVID cases that occurred.”

Thanks to their hard work under challenging circumstances, the team successfully met their utility client’s target and officially energized the substation’s distribution circuits on Dec. 27, 2023—a full four days ahead of schedule.

Lessons Learned

“We’ve done dozens of substations over the years, and we went into this project with a great deal of experience working with every single piece of equipment on that job,” Schwerdt said. “This project truly combined our expertise in utility substations with our core electrical skills in lighting, pipe and wire.” 

“We get paid to figure things out and work out all of the kinks,” Forst agreed. “Reacting to changes in the schedule and equipment delays requires you to think on your toes and work as a team. With a lot of curveballs being thrown at you and people all working on top of each other, you always have to have a Plan B—and we did.”

Having such a strong utility partner in PSE&G also helped enable a successful outcome.

“PSE&G has been very proactive about upgrading its facilities and is among the best utilities we’ve ever worked for,” Schwerdt said. “Based on population growth, the ongoing construction of energy-consuming data centers, and increased demand for things like the internet, EV charging and air conditioning, PSE&G has always been focused on increasing its reliability and upgrading its infrastructure for greater capacity, resiliency and efficiency. We’ve forged a great relationship with them over the years that we’re very proud of.”

“PSE&G’s engineering team is very strong and responsive,” Forst agreed. “And the utility’s proactive culture of safety was squarely focused on doing the right thing throughout the whole project—from the people and the work to the end result.”

For Vilchock, the project delivered personal and professional rewards.

“I’d never had 30 guys working for me before this project, so this one tested me and enabled me to gain a lot of valuable experience,” Vilchock said. “It was great to be able to see the final product come together and it was also very gratifying to know that we helped improve electric reliability and efficiency for the whole community.”

“There are only a handful of contractors who are approved to bid on PSE&G’s substation work, and we’re proud to be one of them,” Schwerdt said. “We’d love more of these projects because this is what we do.”

“We successfully delivered what was expected,” Forst said, “and this project represented a great collaboration between owner, contractor and labor.”

SM Electric / Orange Heights Substation