Brisbane Airport New Parallel Runway Upgrade
SmithBridge (Contracted to Jan De Nul)
-
-
Project Details
Customer: SmithBridge (Contracted to Jan De Nul)
Duration: 2 months
Completion: May 2014
Intro
The Brisbane Airport new parallel runway upgrade project. Integrelec won the contract to be a part of a project that will provide massive social and economic benefits for Brisbane’s residents, visitors and its industries. Integrelec’s involvement in this massive project was to provide power to two berthing dolphins and supply power to an automated mooring system installed by Cavotec, NZ. The mooring system is to attach to a dredging ship which will pump a sand/water mixture to the new runway site as part of the land reclamation process for this project. The ship dredges sand from the Morton bay area of Brisbane. In order to pump enough sand to the new location the ship was in operation for 10 months running 24/7. With a high profile and short deadline for the overall project a high level of redundancy and durability was required.
-
Scope
For Integrelec, there were three main parts to this project; generator control and operation, electrical power distribution and fibre optic networking. As there are no mains power provided to the berthing dolphins Integrelec had to develop an electrical generator system that was both reliable and functional. This system needed to be a stand-alone system as the mooring system is fully automated and only operated from the ship’s bridge via a SCADA enabled laptop. For redundancy there are four generators, two on each dolphin with an umbilical connecting underwater. On each dolphin there is a 38kVA and 500kVa generator. All of the generators are controlled by a PLC. During idle times when the ship is not moored the smaller generators will run continuously. When the ship is approaching the larger generators will start and feed power to the Cavotec mooring system. The power distribution electrical switchboards were all designed and built in house by Integrelec. The installation of all cables was required with thorough planning due to the remoteness of the location, restricted space on the dolphins and the difficulty of underwater cabling. Cavotec’s mooring system required a fibre optic network for their communications. Integrelec was required to run fibre optic cables and terminate fibre optic pigtails within junction boxes at all Cavotec switch locations. The network connected all the points on each dolphin with a network connection underwater connecting the two dolphins.
Commissioning
The deadline for this project was extremely tight with little or no room for error. As the planning and design for this project started, Smithbridge were already building the berthing dolphins. As soon as the first dolphin was built the Integrelec team got straight into the install. Each dolphin was prewired onsite at Smithbridge before being moved to their final location at the port. A new challenge was presented to Integrelec for this install because of the remoteness of the location. Thorough planning and efficient management was required to keep the project on schedule. Once out on the dolphin’s at the port the remainder of the wiring could be complete. Connecting the two dolphins was the next challenge that our team had to face as it involved running an umbilical underneath the water for various power, signal and fibre optic cables. Once complete the final installation and terminations could be made before the next stage of the project. The testing and commissioning of the electrical system and the PLC control was the final part of the project before completion and handover. Our team of engineers worked through the system thoroughly testing each component and running through every scenario to ensure that this system was reliable enough to stay running independently.
-
Highlights
- Fibre Optics Networking
- Allen Bradley Software
- Citect Software
-
Project Breakdown
- Electrical Switchboard Design & Build
- Electrical Wiring
- Allen-Bradley PLC Programming
- Citect SCADA Programming
- Fibre Optic Networking
- Solar Power Lighting