2024 ENGINEERING & OPERATONS PROJECTS
Substation Relay Upgrades
Substation Relays are the brain behind many of the functions and protection that occur in our power grid. LELD will be upgrading existing substation relays with new and more advanced models. This will help integrate controls directly into the devices thus simplify wiring within the control cabinets.
System Reliability and Feeder Hardening
Each year LELWD assesses the vulnerability of our electric infrastructure to identify critical areas to improve. This year we will be replacing many new poles and infrastructure in the Hill Road area of Boxborough. These upgrades will help increase reliability and common equipment failures that happen during harsh weather events such as heavy winds, rain and snow.
Field Device Upgrades
LELD prides itself on using state of the art controls for field devices. LELD will begin procuring and deploying a number of new Capacitor Banks and Reclosers along with new control panels for each. Reclosers increase safety for LELD field personnel as well as minimize outage times for customers while capacitor banks help the distribution system with power quality and voltage control. Having the highest quality field devices and controls is incredibly important to us and our customers.
Mass Ave Spacer Cable
LELD will be converting open wire to spacer cable in East Boxborough on Mass Ave. Open wire construction is susceptible to outages caused by tree contact. Although we do aggressively trim trees throughout our system every day, we cannot completely prevent tree outages with open wire construction.
Spacer cable consists of insulated conductors constructed in a triangular configuration and held together by brackets. The spacer cable is supported by a high-tension messenger wire which helps to maximize reliability. Although tree outages are still possible, they are a lot less likely with spacer cable installed.
Replacing open wire with spacer cable and replacing the poles will help strengthen the distribution system and increase reliability. LELD has very little amounts of open wire left in our system which has helped reduce outages by a tremendous amount.
Tree Wire Upgrades
LELD is replacing older sections of poles and cables in the following areas of our territory with Tree wire. Tree wire is a type of cable used in overhead distribution that has a very strong insulation used in order to mitigate faults occurring due to trees or any other powerful physical damage that would occur.
- Spring – Lake Warren Drive & White Pine Drive
- Summer – Lake area off of Goldsmith Street (Pine Road, Town Road, Woodland Drive, Middlesex Drive)
- Fall – Snow Village area off of Great Road
EV Charging Infrastructure
LELWD will be installing a Level 3 EV Fast Charger within the municipal parking lot located on Stevens Street at the Common. LELD is working with town officials, local business owners and a licensed electrician to install this charger for public use. Portions of this project were funded by the Massachusetts Electric Vehicle Incentive Program grant.
The town of Littleton has also received a grant from Mass EVIP to install a Level 2 EV charger at 300 King Street which is the parking lot for the Castle in the Trees playground. LELWD is working with the Park & Rec Department along with the Town Hall to facilitate the installation and ownership of this charger for public use.
Littleton Electric Light Department continues to be recognized as a Reliable Public Power Provider and a Smart Energy Provider by the American Public Power Association (APPA) — a trade group in Washington, D.C., that represents more than 2,000 not-for-profit, community-owned electric utilities, such as LELD. These recognitions are based on reliability, safety, workforce development, system improvement, energy efficiency and distributed energy resources, environmental and sustainability programs, communication/ education, and smart energy information.
