Case Studies

Wildwood Way Office Building - Standby Generator

Location: Worcester, Worcestershire

Client: Children's Services / IBS, Worcestershire County Council

Start Date: October 2008    

Completion: January 2009           

Value: £135,000

When IBS decided to install an extended-duration emergency electricity supply to protect their UPS system supporting essential IT servers and cooling systems at the Wildwood Way offices, near County Hall, they asked Property Services for advice and support.

Property Services designed a stand-by generator scheme which has taken into account the current and future requirements of IBS's expanding workload.

Siting the generator proved very challenging, due to the fact that WCC leases the Wildwood building and a number of legal agreements were needed from various bodies representing the owner of the building.

A new weatherproof 350 kVA diesel-driven silent running stand-by generator set has been installed to the right of the office building, complete with a 6,000 litre fuel tank to provide emergency stand-by power for six days on full load. 

The existing mains switchgear panel has been modified and a new Automatic Changeover switch added to provide fully automatic operation when the Grid electricity fails.  The machine is large enough to power several hundred average homes, and has seen operation several times during unexpected interruptions of the public supply.

This stand-by generator project at Wildwood follows last year's successful installation of the first 500kVA generator at County Hall, and concludes IBS's investment of nearly £250,000 in infrastructure to support their central IT systems and enhance system security across the Council.