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!~+Ji <br />Elk River <br />Municipal Utilities <br />13069 Orono Parkway <br />Elk River, MN 55330 <br />March 7, 2006 <br />To: Elk River Municipal Utilities Commission <br />Jerry Takle <br />John Dietz <br />Jim Tralle <br />From: Bryan Adams <br />Subject: Padmount Switchgear <br />phone: 763.441.2020 <br />Fax: 763.491.8099 <br />On Wednesday March 8, 2006, bids were received to furnish and deliver padmount <br />Switchgear for our various underground projects. Bids are being reviewed. A bid <br />tabulation and recommendation will be presented at our meeting. <br />The Switchgear being recommended above represents a large deviation from past years. <br />In the past, the padmount gear we purchased is of painted mild steel construction, air <br />insulated, live front with fuses. We are starting to see corrosion problems and paint <br />failures with the mild steel. The live front means 7200 v. termination are exposed and <br />can present a hazard to employees working on this equipment. Fuses if they fail need to <br />be kept in inventory and they are relatively expensive. This pass year we have <br />experienced a couple of outage due to contamination from the air gear. <br />The equipment we are proposing is painted stainless steel instead of mild steel, vacuum <br />switch in insulating oil instead of fuses in air insulation, and dead front instead of live <br />front design. The proposed gear is far superior to the equipment we were previously <br />purchasing, but it comes with a much higher price tag in the area of 80% higher. It is a <br />hard economic pill to swallow, but with our system it is time to go to the better <br />equipment. <br />Attached for your reference, is a picture of what this gear looks like. <br />