Overview

Implementation of load shedding system.

Role

Electrical Engineer

Descripton

Veolia operates the water treatment plant at the ERA Ranger mine at Jabiru in the Northern Territory.

Electricity for the water treatment plant is generated on site with diesel generators and has a power network that is independent of the rest of the site.

The water treatment plant had been experiencing regular power outages due to a combination of mechanical unreliability of the diesel engines and instability of the power system.

The scope of this project included,

• Working with the site operations team and equipment suppliers to improve the reliability of the diesel engines
• Improve the online monitoring of the engines to better predict failures
• Implement a load shedding system to prevent an engine trip cascading to a site wide power outage
• Improve the load management controls

Challanges

This project had several challenges including,

• Poor quality of documentation from the project EPCM
• Limited support from equipment vendor
• Remoteness of the site