Substation Steelwork manufacture, Erection and Substation HV equipment installation
Customer: Iberdrolla and their EPC ‘The Kirby Group’
Year of contract: 2016
Site: Kilgallioch Station, Dumfries and Galloway
The opportunity
Due to Britain’s ageing electricity infrastructure, Iberdrola’s subsidiary Scottish Power are investing in a multi-Billion Pound scheme to upgrade the grid both in Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. A good proportion of this investment is upgrading the existing Substations and the construction of new ones to link up new greener energy generation. Having manufactured Support Steelwork for many of these sites previously either directly to the client or via their EPC’s, the opportunity to install the support steelwork and also HV equipment that performs the key transmission role was also afforded to us based on our company credentials, the need for more specialist installation teams and the ideal size of this Project. The substation site serves directly 96 wind turbines with a generating capacity of 236MW directly and acts as a connector for the adjacent Markhill site which has 28 turbines with a generating capacity of 56MW.
Our cooperation with the successful EPC who recognised the need for a larger subcontractor for this work would provide the knowledge and experience required for future collaborations with all EPC’s or direct work.
The Solution
Power System Services deployed a team to site who had little or no knowledge of the installation of HV electrical substation equipment. With some employed/ bought in experience the team soon familiarised themselves with this work and in particular the techniques of erecting this critical equipment. With the guidance of the EPC and Iberdrola we successfully completed all mechanical erection works to the 4 month programme and with no accidents, incident or near misses. Installed equipment includes but not limited to;
Post insulators, Surge Arrestors, Disconnectors, Earth Switches, Marshalling Kiosks, Circuit breakers, Voltage transformers, HAM structures, Busbars and Earthing of the structures.
Blowers and Pipework Feeds
The support steelwork was manufactured by Power system Services in Chesterfield and the Installation team comprising of a combination of full time managers and engineers plus a selection of our approved regular tradesmen and operatives from different areas of the British Isles.
