Situation Today’s global marketplace requires many businesses to be able to operate 24/7/365. This was the case for Red Ventures, the country’s largest technology-enabled platform for growing sales and marketing businesses. The company’s expertise spans multiple industries including home services, energy, financial services, insurance and software.
The company’s campus headquarters in the Charlotte, N.C., area serves as a data center, call center and critical office environment. In the past five years, Red Ventures doubled the size of its workforce and launched an 180,000 square foot expansion to their global headquarters. In order to accommodate their customers’ critical service needs, the company needed a backup power solution capable of carrying the entire building load with no interruption to the normal business environment.
Challenges The initial design specified a single 2750kW diesel generator; however, that generator would be completely out-of-service during periods of routine maintenance. In addition, because the generator could not be exercised under the necessary load, there were concerns about possible wet stacking. Wet stacking is a condition in diesel engines in which not all the fuel is burned and passes into the exhaust side of the turbocharger and ultimately the exhaust system. Since the exhaust from the pipe is oily, it is referred to as a "wet stack." A new solution would need to address the mission critical nature of the facility by maintaining backup power at all times, had to remain in budget, fit within the footprint of the original backup power solution, and meet the tight project timeline.
Solution National Power Corporation, a member of the Generac Industrial Power Dealer Network located in Raleigh, N.C., proposed a paralleled solution from Generac. Initially, there were some concerns with a parallel solution, since traditional systems typically have extended lead times and third-party switchgear is often difficult to program.
However, Generac’s Modular Power System (MPS) solves these issues with switchgear located on the generator. With the on-generator integration of the paralleling switching, there is no need for expensive and complicated third-party paralleling switchgear.
Paralleling solutions allow users to simply add or subtract a unit anytime they are required. For a growing facility, this flexibility has two advantages: • First, it reduces the initial cost by allowing owners to purchase a smaller kW system to meet current needs and expand the kWs as necessary. • Second, it eliminates the need to estimate ultimate backup power requirements and purchase a large and expensive single engine unit to meet projected power needs, which may, in the long-run, never happen.
The Red Ventures power solution consisted of three 1MW Generac Gemini® systems, providing 3,000kW of backup power that fit into a footprint that was similar to the original single engine unit footprint.
Each Gemini system features two 500kW engines contained in a single enclosure. With this design, when an outage occurs, the first 1,000kW of power will be realized within six seconds. The entire 3,000kW system will be on and at full capacity in less than 10 seconds.
The MPS system provides N+4 redundancy for the critical load and N+1 for the entire load. Most importantly, the facility is never without access to power, including during system maintenance.
Now that the system is installed, Red Ventures also realizes maintenance-related benefits. In particular, the oil capacity of the three installed Gemini units is about 40 percent less than a comparable single unit, which represents a significant cost savings to the customer.
The customer was so satisfied with the solution that they anticipate using Generac’s MPS solution in other parts of the corporate campus as the company continues to grow and expand.
For more information about Generac’s Gemini® generators or our MPS solutions, please contact your local Generac Industrial Power Network distributor/dealer, call 1-844-ASK-GNRC, or email ASKGNRC@generac.com.