Whether designing greenfield substation
projects from the ground up or performing brownfield design associated with
existing substation infrastructure, intelligent 3D substation design employing
BIM processes and reality modeling demonstrates cost and time saving
benefits.
In a greenfield project in Cambodia, PESTECH
undertook a project for Diamond Power Limited for the conceptual design through
commissioning of the 230-kilovolt Kratie and Kampong Cham Substation and
Transmission System. The project will support the growing population and
tourism industry. The Kratie 230/22-kilovolt substation will connect with the
Sesan hydropower plant, which is under construction in the upper Mekong area,
and also serve as a major collection center of power from several mini
hydropower plants, connecting to the national power grid of Cambodia.
Visualization of the 3D substation design was
essential to prepare and plan work before and during construction. The site was
located far from the town within forest and hilly roads and visualization of
the design with accurate dimensions was a significant challenge, which was
successfully overcome using Bentley Substation and Bentley Navigator.
ProjectWise was used for collaboration across departments on-site and offsite
including procurement, management, engineering, and construction. The project
is expected to be completed in November 2017 and PESTECH will also be
responsible for operating the power transmission system for a concession period
of 25 years.
The design of past projects was done manually,
via hand-drawn and manual calculation of components and third-party CAD
software. This approach was prone to human error, time consuming, and resulted
in inconsistent quality. PESTECH’s engineering team reported many benefits of
Bentley Substation from the unified design environment facilitating
cross-discipline collaboration, automated design drawing and reports,
enforcement of engineering standards, and more. These included cost savings in
procurement, reduction in errors, and substantial time savings. A detailed
analysis comparing the use of Bentley applications with previous methods
estimated time savings of up to 70 percent were achieved.
In contrast, approximately 95 percent of
Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E) annual USD 1 billion substation budget
is spent on existing brownfield substations. Since 2016, PG&E has been
pioneering the use of a combination of aerial equipment such as man lifts,
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and on-ground photo equipment to capture
images of existing substations. Bentley’s ContextCapture is used to process
these images and produce accurate 3D reality meshes, which can be referenced
into Bentley Substation to complete the entire substation design in 3D.
ContextCapture models allow effective collaboration between the Transmission
Line, Land Planning and Zoning, and the Electrical and Civil Substation
Engineering departments. ProjectWise is used to manage the models and
facilitate collaboration. With up-to-date 3D models, all stakeholders can
clearly see the impact of each department on the project, avoiding costly
conflicts in the field and allowing for more streamlined, effective, and
sustainable long-term planning.
For community and government relations, this
method can be used to capture and retain historical infrastructure in 3D before
new construction takes place. In areas where thick ballistic walls for security
are required by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC), realistic
renderings of the existing substation and new security walls in 3D helps to
gain community acceptance. 3D models generated by ContextCapture can also be
utilized as a mesh to generate quick and low-cost digital terrain models and
enables PG&E to identify and categorize existing substation assets for
condition-based maintenance substation asset inventories.
PG&E expects to reduce cost spent on
recreating existing substation equipment in 3D by 50 percent, a reduction from
120 hours to less than 60 hours on average. Improving captured 3D model’s
accuracy to within inches will eliminate field measurements on cleared and
energized equipment. PG&E also expects a 50 percent reduction of substation
personnel travels to and from substation facilities.
Ralph Hansen, construction supervisor,
PG&E, said, “Having a complete 3D model at the time of constructability
review allows us to measure electrical and physical clearance in real time,
which helps eliminate costly conflicts during the construction phases. With
today’s increasing substation complexity and decreasing substation footprint,
having a 3D model is a must.”
The South Street 115/11.5/23-kilovolt Indoor
Substation project executed by TRC for National Grid involved rebuilding South
Street Substation in Providence, Rhode Island, converting the existing three
115-kilovolt overhead line supply circuits to underground cable circuits, and
re-routing the existing 23- and 11.5-kilovolt underground feeder getaway
facilities. To complete the project on time and on budget required TRC to
integrate existing conditions to the new construction while the substation
remained in operation. This project was also in a highly visible and congested
area, which caused concern over the aesthetics of the site and building.
The project had a very complicated building
design and required incorporating a large number of subcontractor files in third-party
formats to a single master design model for cross-discipline checking. These
files were placed in ProjectWise and provided an indisputable record of what
was received from subcontractors. Bentley Substation was used to integrate
these different formats into the Bentley Substation models by TRC staff in
design centers across the country. As a result, TRC identified issues before
construction or fabrication that would have led to delays at the site and cost
overruns. Bentley Substation was used to do full 3D client walkthroughs for
interior and exterior design reviews and the 3D models were also used in the
renderings for the planning board and for public comment.
Jason Poissonnier, TRC ProjectWise
administrator, said, “Bentley Substation along with ProjectWise was
instrumental in successfully completing the South Street project, which was in
a congested, highly visible area. TRC utilized resources from several offices
who collaborated on over 2,000 CAD files as well as Excel, Word, PowerPoint,
Outlook, PDF, TIFF, and other files. The ability to incorporate different types
of design files from subcontractors into the 3D model made the design reviews
truly all-encompassing and resulted in identifying many areas that needed
redesign, thereby avoiding costly changes later during construction.”
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