When called on to pick up a load at one of the pumping stations, the MTU Onsite Energy units start and accept load in 10 seconds.
Fairfax County, VA (Vocus/PRWEB) January 13, 2011
Fairfax County’s wastewater system serves an area covering more than 230 square miles and can collect and clean more than 160 million gallons of wastewater per day from about 340,000 homes and businesses. The wastewater management system consists of approximately 3,200 miles of pipe, dozens of pumping stations and several treatment facilities. When the 30-year-old emergency standby generators at three wastewater pump stations required upgrading, project officials determined it was more cost-efficient to completely replace the units with standby power systems from MTU Onsite Energy than to make the needed upgrades to the existing generators. The new units bring backup power online much faster, and they are more compact, easier to maintain and easier on the environment than their predecessors.
Pumping stations get new backup power systems
The Wastewater Collection Division’s Pumping Stations Branch operates and maintains the wastewater pump stations, flow meters, a large-pressure sewer system and several facilities that add chemicals to control odor and corrosion. Unmanned and completely automated, each of the Fairfax County pump stations requires a standby power source that automatically comes online to keep the pumps running and wastewater flowing through the collection system when utility power is lost.
Recently, Cynergy Electric Company Inc., an electrical contractor in Crofton, Maryland, completed a yearlong project for ALPHA Construction Company, Upper Marlboro, Maryland, to replace old backup power systems at three of the pumping stations. The original contract called only for upgrades and repairs of the existing standby generators at the three pumping stations. But after completing a cost-benefit analysis, officials at ALPHA recommended replacing the existing generators instead of upgrading the old ones. The benefits of improved response time, reliability and reduced maintenance far outweighed the additional investment for the new units. The 30-year-old compressed-air-start units used low-speed diesel engines compared to new generators that use 1,800 rpm high-speed diesel engines. Low-speed engines are slow to respond to load changes and take a long time to reach operating temperature. When called on to carry loads at the pumping stations, the old units took almost 15 minutes to start and assume load, according to Dave Ashburn, president of Cynergy.
The age of the existing units also made them expensive and difficult to maintain. “Those units are no longer manufactured, so any replacement parts had to be custom made,” said Ashburn. In addition, he said, the old generators were physically large by today’s standards, and their large compressed-air-start systems took up still more of the limited space inside the pumping stations. The old units also lacked any type of emissions control, since they predated EPA emissions standards for that type of equipment.
Contractor chooses MTU Onsite Energy generators
Given the old age and performance deficiencies of the existing units, Cynergy designed and installed new backup power systems, which included new generators, switchgear, batteries and battery chargers. For the generators, Cynergy turned to Curtis Engine & Equipment Inc., a Baltimore-based distributor for MTU Onsite Energy that supplies emergency standby power systems in the Mid-Atlantic region. “We have a very good relationship with Curtis and have installed numerous MTU Onsite Energy products,” said Ashburn.
The complete text for this case study is available at http://www.cccinc.com/pr/mtuonsite/fairfax
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