The IBEW/NECA team of TD4 Electrical and Guarantee Electrical are helping brighten the front door of a St. Louis civic treasure – the Missouri Botanical Garden.  Deploying design/assist skills, they are part of the team led by general contractor Alberici Constructors making $100 million in improvements to the Jack C. Taylor Visitor Center at the 163-year-old institution in South St. Louis. The team is striving to attain LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certification for the improvements.

Photo courtesy Guarantee Electrical

The garden has remained open during construction, necessitating meticulous planning and execution of tasks that avoid disrupting garden operations while keeping the public safe. It included:

• Swapping electrical loads over from the original Ridgway Center to the temporary visitor center to prepare Ridgeway for demolition.
• Strategically phased shutdowns to install new electrical feeders and install and integrate metering equipment to help the garden measure power consumption.  Each phased shutdown ranged from 8 hours to 24 hours and was highly coordinated to avoid disruption of operations as visitors toured the garden.
• New 2,000-amp switchboard to support building infrastructure, new water features, site electrical and lighting
• Upgrading electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure to support up to 10 EVs charging at one time and install three new dual charging stations.
• Highly coordinated excavation with horticulturist to avoid damaging root systems.
• Improved maintenance of systems in service areas well hidden from the public.

Photo courtesy Guarantee Electrical

Read the full story in the latest issue of St. Louis Construction News and Review.

The national publication “Electrical Contractor” took an in depth look at our IBEW-NECA partners’ development of the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Training Program – now the standard for EV charger installations nationwide.  It noted “Linda Little, assistant director at the IBEW/NECA Electrical Industry Training Center in St. Louis, and Jeff Holmes, an instructor at the center, were heavily involved in the program’s establishment.”

“Load calculation is an important piece of the instruction,” Little noted in the article. “Any electrician can install a charging station, but what happens after they leave? If it’s a homeowner, can they still cook while their car is charging? This is a continuous load, meaning it can take more than three hours. It’s maximum current that produces heat and reduces current to other parts of the electrical system.”

“A lot of the installations are being added to existing electrical systems, so it’s important to be able to explain to customers what their systems can handle,” added Holmes. “A company may want 10 chargers ... but their system can only handle eight or six.”  Read more.