In June 2020, CENTIEL completed the installation of a new UPS to protect the power to a central London Venue.   Located close to Covent Garden, the entertainment space is within an historical building used for dining, parties and drinks receptions, meetings and conferences for up to 1,000 delegates.  The new UPS and plant room now support the power for the entire building including lights, lifts, sound systems, a small gift shop, the internet, phone system and servers.

Louis McGarry, sales and marketing director, CENTIEL UK explains:  “An outdated legacy UPS has now been replaced with CENTIEL’s fourth generation three phase modular UPS, CumulusPower which offers industry leading 99.9999999% (nine, nines) availability translating to just milliseconds of downtime per year.   One of CENTIEL’s top cable entry frame fitted with 5x50kW modules (200 N+1), along with 80 batteries now provides a ten minute run time which then allows the switch over to a generator to ensure power is protected to the venue at all times.”

“We worked with Seahorse Electrical and Maintenance Services Ltd on the project, with who we have a long-standing relationship with the team at Seahorse and have recently completed several large projects with them including a 7.2MW installation at a major medical facility.

“For this central London project, Seahorse managed the full design and build from design to completion, working with the main contractor and the client.   This included UPS, switch gear, lighting, flooring, ceiling, fire dampeners, battery build, DC build, cable trays and all the cabling which included 100 metres from the plant room’s switch gear to the generator which was located externally.

“The main challenge was that the basement plant room at the venue was severely restricted on space  7m2 ] and needed to be accessed via a service entrance, through a network of small corridors and flights of stairs.  As a result, the switch gear that forms part of the plant room had to be delivered in nine separate sections.”

Jason Gibson, director of Seahorse explains: “Due to the limited area, it was important for us to utilize every inch of space and so CumulusPower with its top cable entry option was chosen.  The flexible, modular configuration of CumulusPower allows the inclusion of an input terminal to accept cables from above via steel wire armoured (SWA).  It offered the perfect solution for the small plant room.

“The innovative design meant the UPS could be connected from high level, enabling a more flexible layout and maximization of the use of space.  We needed to remove the false ceiling in the plant room to allow for cabling to be run above the switch gear and UPS.”

McGarry continues: “Full DC work was completed by Seahorse as a contractor of CENTIEL’s, build, which included DC cabling and DC isolation.  Seahorse had everything in place ready for our commissioning UPS engineer’s arrival.

“Small spaces can be dark and so Seahorse had also installed new low-level lighting to the room to allow better visibility for engineers maintaining the equipment in the future.  Emergency lighting was also added in the room.

“In addition, Seahorse recommended that passive fire protection or ‘fire dampers’ were installed in the plant room.  The thermoregulated fire damper seals the room and cuts off oxygen in an emergency therefore, preventing the spread of fire and smoke.

“For a unified, professional look the switch gear, bypass switch and UPS were all produced in the same “black” colour to meet the required end look and quality installation Seahorse aspires to achieve.  Seahorse even replaced the flooring and painted the walls to match the system design colour scheme.

“The total strip-out and installation for the full build took at total of 15 weeks.   As a team we worked very well together and are pleased to confirm Seahorse has now become one of our preferred partners for DC and AC works.”

Article originally featured in Electrical Contracting News November 2020

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