News & Events
West Suffolk NHS Trust - Bury St Edmonds
The standby system of the existing generator control plant required a major upgrade to enable the diesel generators to run in parallel with a new CHP plant being installed at the hospital main site in Bury St Edmonds. Control & Power Systems Ltd were called in at the early design stages by the trust estates department and their consultants to find the most cost effective solution.
The scheme had a number of complications in that the hospital is feed by two utility supplies that feed to separate sections of the LV switchboard and although the existing generators could synchronise on standby applications the trust required something more sophisticated to allow the diesel generators to be backed up during mains failure by the CHP unit and also have “no break” changeover to and from utility supplies.
Control & Power Systems Ltd engineers had a number of discussions with the client and consultant and found a solution that allowed for the existing LV switchboard and generator synchronising switchboard to remain and be upgraded utilising CoMap IS-NT controllers with IM-NT mains paralleling controllers.
The main contract for the modifications along with CHP supply and installation was awarded to Eastern Contracting with Control & Power Systems Ltd nominated as the preferred supplier of the generator and LV switchboard modifications / upgrade.
With the hospital supply being critical work on the modifications had to be arranged around specific time restraints, this meant that the generator control modifications could only be carried out over a two week period and the LV switchboards over a single weekend period. Control & Power Systems Ltd solution to this was to manufacture at our site new control doors and internal chassis plates fitted with all the new equipment required for both the generator system and the utility LV switchboard.
This enabled our engineers to be in a position once on site to remove the entire old generator control equipment and fit the new equipment, commission the standby generators to MF conditions all within 7 days.
The second phase of works involved the modification of the LV switchboard controls and commission the whole system to allow for forward and return “no break” synchronisation of the standby generators with both utility supplies and carry out G59 testing to the satisfaction of the local EDF supply engineer.
The final stage of commissioning work was undertaken over a single weekend once the CHP unit installation was complete, this allowed our control system to allow the CHP to be operated via a command from the hospital BMS via our PLC in normal hours and in the event of a utility failure (either total or one) the standby generators would start and parallel with the CHP and equally share building load.
Operational training of the hospital engineers was carried out prior to hand over in February 2008