St. Louis downtown underground energy grid upgrade hits milestone

120 miles of new pipeline under the streets installed to protect electric wires

"It’s a project we’ve been working on for years now," said Darnell Sanders, Archview Division director, Ameren Missouri. "The conduit, or pipe, that protects our underground electric grid in downtown St. Louis was old. Some of the clay pipe we have replaced was installed a century ago. And while this old pipe has served us well, it was experiencing cracking and breaking; it was time to replace it. As such, we've installed a new, modern PVC pipe that we expect to last at least 75 years."

The Smart Energy Plan project involved installing new PVC pipe, which has meant a large Ameren Missouri presence downtown over the past few years. Motorists and pedestrians have seen large spools of new PVC pipe on the back of trailers as crews fed it down a manhole or near a steel plate where they were working.

"We are excited to announce this system will be one of the first in the nation to have smart technology in a downtown environment that helps to reduce outages for customers," said Paul Aten, supervising engineer, Ameren Missouri. "It can help take outages from hours to minutes and even seconds as the system determines the fewest number of outages possible while repairs are safely made. We are already working on pulling new electric cable through the new pipe. I'm happy to say that the cable installation process takes less space and less time to install using the new conduit."

"I'd like to thank the residents and businesses of downtown St. Louis for their patience as we have been working on this project," said Sanders. "We appreciate your partnership and understanding in making these needed and critical improvements. This is an integral part of our Smart Energy Plan that is supporting reliability for those living and working downtown."

Missouri legislators and St. Louis business leaders were on hand to witness the last large manhole for the underground conduit project being lifted into place at an event on Nov. 16. They saw a crane lift two, separate 22,000-pound sections into place at the intersection of 13th and Locust streets. Watch for a new video from the event coming soon in a POWERforward Update newsletter!