The North West region of Western Australia is internationally renowned for large scale mining. With exports on the climb again, the huge amount of iron ore sent to China (and other parts of the world) is keeping the NW ship loading facilities running at maximum capacity. And any downtime as the ore carrying ships are loaded can cost vast amounts of money.
It was an ongoing downtime issue that Allight Territory Manager Brett Hansen was tasked with reducing. One of his clients – a major exporter of iron ore with large-scale ship loading facilities – had serious issues with the reliability of their power supply.
“When the power was lost to the conveyor and loader – which unfortunately was becoming a frequent event – the whole export operation stopped” explained Brett.
“With everything and everybody standing idle, it was creating long delays and reducing the tonnage output”.
“With less ships coming and going, there is a subsequent loss of revenue. And at the scale of these operations, that’s big dollars” he said.
To see the challenge firsthand, Brett toured the ship-loading facility with the on-site engineers and operations manager. After looking at their current application and the power consumption, he returned to Allight Perth and crunched the numbers with a team of power generation experts.
The results showed that an FG Wilson P150 Generator would be the perfect starting point for their needs
“The FG Wilson is world-famous for is reliability. Yet even more, they are made robust and strong to withstand the rigours of continuous operation”
“When you also include highly-economic engine performance and extremely advanced environmentally-friendly emission controls, the FG Wilson Gen Set is the number one choice for reliable export operations” said Brett.
“Even more, the special requirements of their ship-loading application required some tailor-fitted extras, including a Modbus that allows the client to control the gen set remotely”
The complete list of extras is a little too long to include here, but some of the extra features included full-enclosure guarding to protect workers, a 9kg fire extinguisher, a bunded fuel tank, galvanised skid with forklift points, LED lighting and exhaust lagging and cladding.
“With all the extras, it took around 2 months to complete the gen set build which is very fast considering how custom-built this gen set really is. When it reached the site, it took another week of commissioning” Brett explained.
The result is a massive reduction in downtime – and increased revenue – for the client. Now, if power is lost, the generators automatically start and keep the feed conveyor running to the ships. Even better, the engineers can monitor the gen set from their remote office location, helping to keep the whole operation running smoothly and efficiently.
For more information about a custom-built FG Wilson Generator Set, call Brett Hansen on 0428 520 821 or email brett.hansen@allight.com. For all other inquiries, contact your local Allight facility with our branch locator.
