The Badger Coulee Transmission Line: Overcoming the Challenges of Wisconsin

The Badger Coulee transmission line is a 180-mile 345 kV transmission line that extends from the Briggs Road Substation in Holmen, Wisconsin, to the Cardinal Substation in Middleton, Wisconsin. With routing and siting efforts starting in May 2010 and construction completing in December 2018, the 8 ½ years in-between provided the project team with some of the most unique and interesting challenges that designing and constructing a transmission line in the state of Wisconsin has to offer. First, navigating the routing and siting effort to complete the state regulatory process to obtain project approval from the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin. Once project and route approval were received, the detailed design and construction of the line commenced. This paper and presentation will detail some of the more unique challenges the project team had to tackle and what they did to overcome those challenges. These challenges included: considerable variation in terrain from the low-lying lands of south-central Wisconsin to the coulee regions of western Wisconsin; construction adjacent to a major interstate for approximately 100 miles; single, double, and triple circuit configurations; single-pole, three-pole, and H-Frame structure designs; long-span river crossing in excess of 2,200’; direct embed, reinforced concrete, and micropile foundation designs; helicopter, including heavy-lift, construction; DOT communication fiber and railroad signal interference; and planning, scheduling, and sequencing man-power and efforts.