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New Zealand Engineering 1998 March

Auckland CBD.   The Heat is on <HR>Anna Wallis is a freelance journalist based in Auckland <IMG SRC="../gifs/heat1.JPG" NOSAVE BORDER=0 HEIGHT=542 WIDTH=177 ALIGN=RIGHT>A bomb threat, crank calls and clamour on national television that you should lose your job all could have distracted Mercury Energy's network general manager Richard Gibbons from the task at hand - engineering a return to full capacity of the Auckland CBD power supply. The man at the centre of the fracas is grateful to IPENZ members and other members of the engineering fraternity for their support during the power crisis - and there has been support from many quarters - amidst the detractors. Things started to go wrong for Mercury Energy - publicly at least - when it lost the second of four cables that bring power to the Auckland CBD. At that point a crisis team was put in place, says Mr Gibbons. "That meant we had problems supplying the lower part of the CBD and we had to get a series of temporary reinforcements done to link the different substations together and to get some extra power from the outer part to the inner part...that meant primarily just people from our network business unit working together and sorting out what could be done, evaluating whole series of options and then working with the wider company and our contractors and consultants to physically get the work done." Richard Gibbons said when the full crisis hit, with the first oil-filled cable and then the second going out over the weekend (of 21-22 February) "all sorts of people in the company came in on that Saturday and we started into a series of immediate things to do -primarily around getting things into the best condition for Monday morning (23 February ). We did this knowing it was going to be very bad and that we wouldn't be able to supply load everywhere. But we needed to just try and see what we could do and to see again how we could reconfigure the network to minimise the area affected." Engineers from throughout the company were involved and a "major interface" with Mercury's marketing team was needed to work out clear messages to make public instead of delivering engineering-speak. Technical and other terms had almost to be condensed to one-liners in advertisements to get information across. <IMG SRC="../gifs/media.JPG" NOSAVE BORDER=0 HEIGHT=137 WIDTH=189 ALIGN=RIGHT> While that weekend was a difficult period, by Monday morning, says Mr Gibbons, he had moved from that hands-on crisis management to liaison with other general managers within the company, including engineer Bruce Turner and "former" engineer Dr Pat Strange, to form a series of seven engineering teams. The teams drew on resources from all round the company and involved, in all, about 50 engineering staff plus consultants and engineers from "one or two" other power companies. The teams were: The Fix team. Its sole focus was working on the cables that had blown and ensuring they were brought back into service in the quickest time. Liaised with contractors, all of whom are outside of Mercury because all such work is outsourced. The team was involved in very detailed project planning, particularly "on such complicated tasks as 110 kV gas-filled jointing and 110 kV oil-filled jointing which are highly intricate processes." Mr Gibbons says the most efficient means doesn't necessarily mean swamping the project with resources and there can be just as many problems caused by having too many people as too few. An important part is having everything else ready to go, such as the gas systems, and borrowing facilities from South Power was needed. With no 110 kV jointers in New Zealand, Energy Australia staff were called in. This kind of work is their "bread and butter" says Mr Gibbons. Local people can assist but not actually take charge of the work. The fix team not only had those logistics but "an enormous amount" of civil work to do. One failed cable was in the side of a bank and the four metre high excavation required had to have emergency supports, the joint bay needed a concrete floor and the temporary shelter that had to cover the job had to be waterproof. The Immediate Contingency team. Considered the next stage of Mercury's plan - between now and the building of the proposed tunnel. Looks at "what if ?" scenarios if other things went wrong. This incorporates the building of a temporary overhead line, suggested by GCL's Geoff Hunt on Saturday morning. Team is managed by Peter Yeung. Trans Power is working with this project, under the guidance of Bob Thompson. Other forms of temporary reinforcement are also being considered, such as taking intermediate voltages, such as 22 kV from other substations into the city. The Generation team. Self-explanatory; this is the team that looked at bringing generators into the city from Australia and even further afield. Headed by Patrick Strange and Ray Gatland. Includes both getting the generation and working out how to use it. Though a civil defence emergency wasn't called, civil defence guidelines were used to help allocate resources. Mini power plants have been established at two substations with about 3-4 megawatts of generation being injected straight into the busbars to help share the load around, and Mercury is looking at a couple more. Investigation team. Headed by Geoff Beever to find expert advice and specialists from overseas to come in and advise Mercury on the cable problems. In parallel with that, a separate study was undertaken by Simon Mackenzie to take the worst case, most cautious scenarios and look at what cable ratings should be when the cables were brought back into service. A long-term investigation is also underway to consider any permanent problems and means of mitigating problems. Australian jointing specialist Neville Bardon has been brought in and a Canadian expert on soil conditions will also visit. Start-up team. Self-explanatory as well. Looking at configuration of the network with different cables coming back into service. Led by Raymond Cheung and includes systems operations engineers who run the network. Back-up operations team. Checking spares, sourcing replacements and generally checking everything is in order. Responsible for contingency plans if other things go wrong. Led by Alistair Glynn-Jones. Risk management project team. Led by Bryce Turner, this team is required to go out and help with forward planning. Produced a risk register of all those things at risk and how Mercury was going to mitigate them, ranging from management of the contracting staff in the field who were working long hours, to everyday equipment needing replacement because of the heavy work load. The seven teams were in place by the Monday morning and interact on different matters. An overall combined meeting is held daily to review progress and make the joint decisions where needed. About 100 staff, contractors, consultants have been involved - half "outside" and half inside. People management has been very important considering the seven-day a week, almost 24 hour a day nature of the task. Asked if the current job is interesting from an engineering point of view, when stripped of the crisis element, Richard Gibbons says "some of the things are straightforward and have to be done in the proper order, pedantically, and can't be short circuited. So from an engineering perspective, there are challenges around them, but it's not ground breaking type stuff. "However, a lot of other things, like designing and building an overhead line along the railway, mean there's a whole new area to do. And a lot of the lateral thinking type things, the `what ifs ?', and some of the generation solutions such as bringing in the Union Rotorua, require a lot of engineering solutions that we haven't dealt with before." Has Mercury Energy got the engineering expertise to cope? Mr Gibbons says in terms of the professional engineering expertise within New Zealand, the answer is yes. Local people, not necessarily from Mercury, have managed the planning, logistics and much of the design work. Overseas parties are needed for the jointing skills and specialists in cable and ground matters. The problem has created much interest overseas, with the BBC, CNN and other networks requesting interviews. Mercury's internet site had 15,000 hits in the first two days. New Zealand engineers have been quick to offer help, though Mr Gibbons points out there is still no official answer as to what went wrong. "Engineers, particular power system engineers all round the country, have contacted us offering advice and equipment. And that's irrespective of where they are in the marketplace. And that's very reassuring." And despite the critical nature of the job and the chaos it has produced, it has been an opportunity for some engineers to get their hands dirty again. Mr Gibbons says that for a lot of engineering managers, usually tied up in managing teams of people, it has meant getting back to the engineering side of things and that has produced a lot of enthusiasm. <HR> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="30"><img src="/ipenz/images/front/1x1tr.gif" alt="Blank space" width="30" height="50"></td> <td width="160" valign="top" align="left"><img src="/ipenz/images/front/1x1tr.gif" alt="Blank space" width="160" height="50"></td> <td width="20"><img src="/ipenz/images/front/1x1tr.gif" alt="Blank space" width="20" height="50"></td> <td width="400" align="left" valign="top" class="bodya"><img src="/ipenz/images/front/1x1tr.gif" alt="Blank space" width="400" height="50"></td> <td align="right" valign="top" width="250"> </td> </tr> </table> <div id="footer"> © 1996 - 2012 IPENZ </div> </div> </body> </html>