Belfair Electrical Upgrades

The Belfair Infrastructure project is a priority for the District to increase resiliency, reliability, and capacity for its North Mason customers. The first phase of the project is at the site of the former Belfair Warehouse. There, we will construct a switching station to upgrade PUD 3's connection to BPA's transmission lines. This work will provide existing customers with a more reliable connection to the regional grid. It will also provide future connection points to increase electrical capacity for additional residential and commercial development in the Belfair urban growth area.

Why is this project necessary?

RELIABILITY: The ring-bus will provide modern protection upgrades to avoid impacting thousands of customers on multiple substations when problems occur. With the current technology of the Belfair Substation, when a fault occurs on the transmission side, the only protection is for BPA to drop the feed between Shelton and Bremerton and Mason PUD 3 loses transmission to five substations at once. This causes widespread power outages to over 17,000 customers, and greatly delays restoration times.

CAPACITY: PUD 3 is not able to provide the power to meet the large requests and short timeline opportunities that have been proposed over the past several years. The lack of electrical capacity continues to be a primary deterrent for companies considering locating to Mason County and the Belfair area. The Belfair Electrical Capacity Infrastructure Project will open the Belfair manufacturing and industrial area to commercial growth, providing significant economic benefits to all the surrounding communities (including Belfair, Shelton, Grapeview, Allyn, Tahuya peninsula, and even Bremerton in Kitsap County). In recent years, the Economic Development Council (EDC) of Mason County, had to turn away multiple recruitment opportunities due to lack of electrical infrastructure capacity. This resulted in an estimated loss of hundreds of potential new jobs.

BPA TRANSMISSION TAP: The project also provides an opportunity to expand access to the Bonneville Power Administration’s (BPA) high voltage transmission system for future load growth in the area. BPA has restricted any future taps along this transmission corridor, so the only way to provide additional capacity for customers is through a ring-bus style switching station like the one we're constructing in phase one of the Belfair Electrical Capacity Infrastructure Project. 

For project details and a FAQ list, visit: www.pud3.org/belfairpower