Ameren Illinois has announced plans for a new $9-million Salem substation adjacent to their current substation in the west side Salem Industrial Park.
Pending completion of the sale of ten acres of property approved by the Salem City Council Monday night, Ameren spokesperson Brian Bretsch says work will get underway on the new transmission substation that is being named the Finks Substation after Salem sports legend Jim Finks.
“Right now the current substation that is setup has both distribution and transmission within that substation. Distribution is the stuff that powers your home and your local businesses. The transmission is the higher voltage that we bring in from other points of the state. This is what we are going to do is create the Finks Substation and that will handle all our transmission moving forward.”
Bretsch says Ameren customers throughout the Salem area will benefit.
“We are going to add a lot more capacity, transformers and equipment in there to add redundancy and resiliency to the equipment. And what I mean by that is if we have any sort of outages in the area we will be able to re-route our power safely and efficiently to people around the Salem area.”
Bretsch says Ameren Illinois is making similar investments around the state to strengthen the power grid. He reports the goal is to have the new Finks substation completed and on line by the end of 2023.
The Salem City Council approved the sale of the ten acres of property to Ameren Illinois for $50,000. The property lies along Hotze Road around the current Ameren West Salem substation.
