EPHRATA — Recognition of Grant County PUD employees and their work with a customer led to a short discussion of the changing customer market at the regular commission meeting Jan. 10.

General manager Kevin Nordt called it a “tremendous piece of work across the entire district,” trying to meet a request for service from the operators of the Yahoo! data center in Quincy.

The data center operators estimated they would need service within 16 months when they came to the PUD almost two years ago, said Jeff Shupe of the PUD. “A very, very short timeline,” Shupe said.

Since then “the plan has changed a number of times,” Shupe said, but PUD employees kept working on the request for a substation to provide electricity for the expansion. The first step was to acquire the property for the substation and an easement for the transmission lines, “a major milestone,” Shupe said.

Construction on the substation could begin as early as February, with electrical line construction in about two months, he said. Utility district employees negotiated for the substation site and the easement, “which was quite a process,” Shupe said.

The project required surveying the property, designing the substation and transmission lines, fees as the project has progressed, and building a system to provide temporary service. It required a series of continuing negotiations, risk analysis, and reviewing the plans as the project progressed.

The project encompassed a number of PUD departments, Shupe said, from preparing a site development plan and figuring out how to stay with the timeline, to negotiating for the easements, to keeping track of the fees.

The project is on schedule to provide service in September, Shupe said.

Nordt said the project was “a real testament to the creativity” of the PUD staff. “These builds don’t look very much at all like the simpler substations a lot of the system is comprised of,” Nordt said. “It really is first-class work.”

In answer to a question from commissioner Dale Walker, Nordt said customers are getting a better idea of the challenges of large complex projects, which should make similar projects somewhat easier in the future.