VIDALIA — The City of Vidalia is seeking funding to build a second electrical substation to support its industrial park near the now under construction Vidalia Port.

Concordia Economic Development Executive Director Heather Malone said the city started looking at the possibility of adding a second substation after discussions with Hinterland — which announced in 2013 plans to locate a biomass production plant in the park — and other potential industries.

“In talking to industries looking to locate because of port development and talking with the utility dept, we are going to quickly run out of electrical capacity,” Malone said. “There is going to be a huge need to add on to our substation or have a separate substation for industrial users.”

The second station would help add some redundancy into Vidalia’s electrical system should something happen to the proposed industrial or existing commercial and residential station, she said.

The city got a rough estimate of approximately $6 million for the substation about a year ago.

“That would give the basic foundation and the ability to grow that substation,” Malone said. “You could add transformers to it as you grew, because we don’t to find ourselves in another situation where we don’t have enough capacity.”

The city has no finalized plans to add the station, but in a recent meeting with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Services, city officials sought to find out if the department has a program to help offset or pay for the costs of the substation.

“In these discussions, we were talking about utilizing the (city’s) broadband infrastructure to improve utilities as well,” Malone said. “They felt they could help with that project to help create a smart grid system and a smart meter system.”

A USDA representative visited Vidalia this week to evaluate the proposal.

Malone said the cost of the project could also be offset by selling power to the electrical industry.