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A diagram presented to the Hewitt City Council shows plans for an electrical substation at the northeast corner of Spring Valley Road and Old Temple Road, under an existing transmission line. The city approved a permit for the substation, with requirements for a masonry wall with trees planted around it.

Hewitt City Council approved a special permit Monday for an electrical substation on a 2.27 acre plot of land at the northeast corner of Old Temple Road and Spring Valley Road, prompting some concern from residents of the area.

A construction timeline is not stipulated in the permit, but the city added requirements for a couple aesthetic considerations in response to requests neighbors made during an Aug. 2 Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. The commission recommended approval of the permit for Oncor Electric Delivery with the conditions that the substation is surrounded by an 8-foot masonry wall and that evergreen trees are planted every 8 to 10 feet around the outside. The city council approved the permit Monday with those requirements. Five residents on Keswick Drive or Briar Ridge Drive made comments during a hearing before the planning and zoning vote, according to meeting documents.

Kimley-Horn, a planning and design consulting firm, made the permit request on behalf of Oncor.

The plan previously featured a 7-foot-tall chain link fence topped with barbed wire. The change to a masonry wall was made to accommodate preliminary safety concerns about the possibility of people being able to climb into the property, which Oncor siting specialist Seth Sampson said will be constantly monitored.

The substation will have four electrical transformers and two control center buildings. City Manager Bo Thomas said the substation will serve to take energy from a transmission line that passes over the site and store and redistribute it to other locations. He said the substation will serve electrical customers in Hewitt and surrounding areas.

Sampson said the substation would benefit the area in some outages. He said adding a substation increases reliability and gives service providers more tools to get power back up and running when it goes down.

The installment also could benefit the area economically, because large companies planning to move into an area often ask where the nearest substation is when planning their location, Sampson said.

Some residents were concerned about the placement of the substation next to houses on Briar Ridge Drive and a neighborhood still under development across Spring Valley.

Oncor has owned the property for many years, which Sampson said was part of the decision to build the substation there. He said the company has to find property owners willing to sell space at a reasonable rate, but in this case the company already had land to build on.

Sampson said Oncor also has to take into account where the main transmission line runs, and it happens to run across the adjacent neighborhood onto the vacant property.

“If we’re over a certain distance from our transmission line it is a much longer process,” Sampson said. “Engineering-wise it’s also much more easy to be located right underneath one if we can.”

Sampson said he hears concerns about property value often when building substations in new neighborhoods. He said Oncor researches similar areas where it has built and has not found that substations hurt tax values nearby.

“What our data has shown over the last ten years is that there isn’t a correlation with property values and the adjacency to the substation,” Sampson said.

In response to concerns about interference with TV and internet services, Sampson said he has never heard complaints about substations causing that issue. He said transmission lines can sometimes cause the radio to cut out when someone drives under them, but the highest frequency at the location would be the main transmission line, which is already in place.

“We get a lot of feedback from our customers and it would be the first time I’ve heard someone say that they knocked out, you know, the Cowboys playing or something like that because they’re next to the substation,” Sampson said.

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Kourtney David is a Baylor University graduate from Springfield, Missouri. She joined the Tribune-Herald staff in July 2022.

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A diagram presented to the Hewitt City Council shows plans for an electrical substation at the northeast corner of Spring Valley Road and Old Temple Road, under an existing transmission line. The city approved a permit for the substation, with requirements for a masonry wall with trees planted around it.

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