500kVA Temporary Generator Hire for City Bank
Having worked with this Facilities Management Group on previous occasions, Powerhire were delighted to be approached to provide a temporary generator hire solution to power a foreign bank’s UPS’ whilst work could be carried out on the site’s LV switchboard.
In 1929, the first overseas branch of this foreign bank was established in London, and the first financial institution set up by any South East Asian bank. The founding of their London branch was a truly historical landmark for them. It has continued to expand steadily over the years and now in its 88th anniversary it has earned a fantastic reputation and is an important member of the City’s banking community. Therefore, the problem with their LV switchboard, where the changeover switch wasn’t working and won’t start their back-up power, needed rectifying immediately before it impacted on the bank’s business and its reputation.
When the Contract Manager of this reputable bank called his usual contact at Powerhire, one of our Technical Sales Managers, he was keen for us to meet him onsite to discuss the temporary generator hire requirements and for us to carry out a site survey and an investigation into the LV switchboard to ascertain the most suitable generator system set up including suitable connections into the switchboard.
Following a recent service of the site’s back-up generator system it was discovered that there was a fault on the LV switchboard that affected the changeover from mains power to the back-up generator power. The changeover switch on the site’s switchboard simply wasn’t working and therefore if a mains power outage was to occur at the Bank, the site would not switch to using the back-up generator power, thus rendering the Bank without any power. Obviously this scenario would be hugely damaging to the Bank’s business and an immediate solution to fix the fault on the switchboard was required.
To enable the fault finding process the site required a mains shut down. The site could run without mains for a limited time via their in-house UPS’ but their Contract Manager knew this wouldn’t give them enough time to isolate the fault and fix it which was why the temporary generator hire was necessary. The difficulty was finding the precise location on the switchboard for our generator to connect to as well as ensuring that power remained on the various switchboard circuits to enable the Panel Engineer to work on it to diagnose the changeover switch problem.
Following our site visit and discussions with their Contract Manager and Panel Engineer our Technical Sales Manager recommended a solution that would power the UPS’ and in theory replicate the site’s mains power, whilst the work was undertaken on the switchboard.
Once the Contract Manager was completely satisfied with the solution our Generator Hire Coordinator organised the equipment to be serviced and loaded onto our HIAB in preparation for its imminent departure. During the very early hours on a Saturday morning our Engineers arrived onsite and set up a 500kVA temporary generator and additional fuel tank, 50m of 240mm2 rental cable at 2 per phase which they connected from the generator breaker into the pre agreed location on the LV switchboard. 120mm rental cable was then routed into our temporary mains distribution unit [MDU] for connection to the site’s 3 x UPS’.
Once the temporary generator power and associated equipment was fully installed, connected and commissioned we helped assist with the fault finding of the changeover switch on their LV switchboard. Once successful we de-commissioned the temporary generator package before removing it from site on the same Saturday, much to the satisfaction of the client. We left the site with a functioning changeover switch and an operational back-up generator power system.
