Powering a new era in London transport

Crossrail is the new high-frequency, high-capacity railway connecting Heathrow and West London with the central and eastern areas of the city. As part of this landmark project, VolkerFitzpatrick Ltd were managing a £50m upgrade of the Ilford Yard train depot, and asked us to supply temporary power to help test and commission new sidings and buildings. With so much testing and servicing going on, avoiding outages and voltage drops was crucial. At the same time, keeping generators running all the time would be too expensive. So we had to design a system that would be consistent and reliable, but also lean and cost effective.

Using three small 500 kVA generators, linked to an uninterruptible power supply of two more 500 kVA units, we built a system that would deliver load on demand. Effectively, the generators would switch on and off automatically to create the right load for the site at any given time.

Our team worked round the clock, delivering and installing equipment between midnight and 5am so we didn’t interrupt the work.

Once the generators were running, engineers back in our Remote Operating Centre (ROC) stayed ahead of any issues with Aggreko Remote Monitoring (ARM), which sends data from our generators to our technical team in real time.

The system was a success, and cut costs and emissions at the same time. And because we used smaller generators, there was less noise too – important for work close to residential areas.