2 x 500kVA Sets on Parallel Redundancy

Early Friday morning one of the World’s largest insurance brokers in the City contacted Powerhire for emergency generator power after finding themselves without mains power to a third of their iconic office block in London’s Square Mile.

With expertise earned over centuries, this well -known Company is the foundation of the insurance industry and the future of it. Led by expert underwriters and brokers covering over 200 territories, backed by diverse global capital and excellent financial ratings, this company works with a global network to grow the insured world; building resilience for businesses and local communities and strengthening economic growth around the world.  With such a reputation at stake and the mains power outage directly affecting the Company’s trading floors the necessity for emergency generator power was critical.

Their iconic office’s in the heart of the financial district took eight years to build, 33,510 cubic meters of concrete, 30,000 square metres of stainless steel cladding and 12,000 square metres of glass were used during the construction.  From the building’s main LV supply the electrical infrastructure is distributed throughout the office floors via rising busbars running up the external corners of the building.

The loss of power to a third of the building was due to the unexpected failure of 2 of the building’s busbars.  This failure in the electrical infrastructure and therefore the distribution of electricity across the site not only affected the power to the trading floors but also the power to the site’s back-up generator system which was therefore incapable of initiating.  As soon as the site’s Facilities Manager became aware of this emergency situation, he contacted Powerhire for the provision of emergency generator power.

Our Technical Sales Manager arrived onsite as soon as possible following the call.  He met with the client and having worked together on previous occasions they immediately set to the task of finding the quickest solution possible.  The most pressing problem with the severe space restriction coupled with keeping disruption to a minimal for the densely populated surrounding offices and busy public areas.

Powerhire naturally suggested their super silent generators to ensure noise was kept to a minimum, but installation of the emergency generator power needed to be quick, efficient and delicately planned into the tight space that we suggested. Powerhire identified a 24 tonne lorry lift that would have the capacity to position 2 x 500kVA emergency generator power as well as 2 x 3,000ltr fuel tanks and mains distribution unit [MDU].  Once the FM was completely confident with the solution specified by us our Hire Coordinator was contacted for the immediate dispatch of the generators, fuel tanks, MDU, distribution boards and approximately 100m of rental cable.

Once the Installation team and engineers arrived onsite the rental equipment was quickly off loaded and carefully skated into the most suitable position on the lorry lift at ground level.  Once all the equipment was in the correct location the engineers connected all the necessary cabling from the generators and fuel tanks into the MDU.  Cabling was then connected from the MDU running neatly up and around walkways to the numerous distribution boards that were installed to feed power into the individual floors.  All cabling was secured with cable covers for the safely of public foot fall.

Powerhire worked tirelessly overnight and as quickly as possible to ensure the building had power by the following morning and the client was thrilled to be able to open the trading floor for business as usual.