Dieselec Thistle to deliver critical power for emergency care at Cramlington Hospital

Published: 19-Feb-2014

New 11kV high voltage system installed in purpose-built energy centre


Dieselec Thistle has been awarded a £1m project by Balfour Beatty Engineering Services for Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust to install a standby power system at the new £70m Cramlington Hospital.

The new 11kV high voltage system will be installed in a purpose-built energy centre to support business continuity at the new emergency care hospital, which provides vital services to communities across Northumberland.

The project includes three 2MVA 11kV standby generators, which will be installed and commissioned by Dieselec Thistle this month as part of a significant scheme that also incorporates the fuel infrastructure and complex dual redundant control systems for parallel soft transfer control and synchronising to the automatically-selected mains incomer (dual incomers).

Specification for the Cramlington Hospital standby power system includes the three FG Wilson 2MVA high-voltage generators along with the required sound attenuation and control systems for each unit. The fuel system will provide a minimum of 200 hours fuel autonomy in line with HTM regulations, comprising a 156,000-litre bulk fuel storage tank along with three 4,000-litre bunded day tanks, one to feed each of the three generators.

The control systems for the Cramlington installation have been designed to offer maximum integrity for the standby power system with master and dual redundant PLC (Programmable Logic Control) systems and three remote I/Os, one for each of the generators.The installation will also include full Energy Network Management System (ENMS) controls and a Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system linked to the PLC, to monitor equipment performance and identify any faults, ensuring that available standby power can be optimised in the event of an outage.

Kenny Berrie from Dieselec Thistle said: “As a specialist emergency care facility, Cramlington Hospital’s standby power requirements are even more business critical than most hospitals of this size. As a result, we have designed a particularly robust standby power installation with a complex network of controls that ensure the three generators synchronise quickly and efficiently for maximum load under normal conditions. Should there be any fault on the system, the controls have been programmed to optimise the available equipment, with dual safeguards, monitoring and individual fuel tanks all helping to maximise resilience.”

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