For this project, our customer is a global warehousing and logistics company, specializing in the transportation and storage of metals, minerals, and coal.
They have built a state of the art, flagship coal handling facility on the Mississippi River in Southeast Louisiana for the blending and export of domestically mined coal.
At the facility, there is an offloading dock and main conveyor which feeds into the stockpile and dozer traps for the storage and blending of material. At the opposite end of the main conveyor line is a state of the art Ship-Loader for material loading onto ocean going vessels for the export of product.
Our scope of supply included the electrical equipment for the facility’s entire electrical system described in the details below as well as engineering for the protective relay system.
With regards to Phase 1 of the project, the facility is powered by a 38kV incoming line from the utility which feeds into SF6 pad mounted switches. The switches feed the Mains of the (2) primary E-Houses on each end of the facility, which are 2-piece buildings dimensioned at 74’L x 33’W and 64’L x 30’W.
During the RFQ stages, we proposed an alternate of using 38kV GIS for the primary switchgear line-up as opposed to traditional metal-clad switchgear. This provided space optimization and an arc-resistant quality to the line-up, which the customer chose to utilize in our offering. There are outgoing sections of the 38kV gear which feed the 7.5MVA | 34.5kV/4160V and 3.75MVA 34.5kV/480V station transformers.
Downstream of the station transformers is 4160V Metal-Clad switchgear as well as 480V Switchboards and MCCs. The 4160V switchgear line-up primarily feeds the (8) Medium Voltage VFDs that run the main conveyors. The 480V Switchboards feed miscellaneous loads throughout the facility as well as numerous 480V VFDs controlling the dozer traps and secondary conveyors.
Midway through the project, the customer issued additional RFQs which we secured to expand our scope of supply – specifically the 4160V motor/gearbox package and (2) additional E-Houses. The motor/gearbox package was for the main conveyors controlled by the (8) aforementioned VFDs. One of the two additional E-Houses was for the Outload dock – a single piece 55’L x 22’W building equipped with 4160V Switchgear and VFDs as well as 480V MCC. The other E-House was for a Pumphouse building equipped with 480V VFDs and MCC.
Throughout the duration of the project we have provided extensive product knowledge and recommendations to the customer and their owner’s engineer, as well as detailed engineering for the protective relay scheme and coordination. Start-up and commissioning for our supplied equipment occurred December of 2013 for the scheduled first operation of the facility in Q1 of 2014.