Building a sustainable power solution for urban construction site

Construction sites require alot of power. From powering machinery and hand tools to welfare facilities. As is often the case on construction sites, a mains connection is not always available. Which was why Keltbray, a leading engineering specialist managing the construction of a new housing development for one of the UK’s leading house builders asked for our help.

A key requirement of this project was to have the ability to have a local power supply and for it to provide as little disturbance to the local residents and the environment as possible. Typically, the site would use generators and transformers. However, due to the location and surrounding residential areas, the client required a solution that was clean and quiet to ensure a zero diesel and zero noise construction site.

Workers would also be using power tools at height, so the solution needed to be highly portable, lightweight and with a small footprint so it could be lifted onto balconies.

To meet our customer’s requirement to be a zero diesel construction project, we used six space saving, off-grid, battery power units. The units each provided 16 kW of useable lithium-ion phosphate battery storage, delivering silent operation and reduced emissions.
Their compact and lightweight design also made the units easy to handle and lift to where the power was required.

To give our customer greater insight, our batteries are also equipped with a full remote monitoring and data platform. This allowed us and the customer to view the performance and operational efficiency of the battery remotely, 24/7/365.

Our customer was able to power their site, meeting all emissions, noise and weight restrictions. Our solution delivered on its objectives. Fuel usage, emissions and noise were all greatly reduced. Across the total runtime of 1392 hours, 1531 litres of fuel were saved, around 1.1 litres per hour, compared to a standard generator solution. This resulted in a reduction of 4.1 tonnes of carbon emitted. The full solution was delivered within a one week timeframe to ensure the client did not incur any project delays.