Renovating for robustness

18 Mar 2011

Mt Cenn Cruaich is a key transmission site for Broadcast Australia. Recent upgrades to the power supply systems onsite have improved reliability, and are helping enhance the robustness of the company’s broadcast infrastructure.

The transmission site at Mt Cenn Cruaich—located between Dubbo and Coonabarabran in NSW— is an important facility for Broadcast Australia and its customers. It broadcasts to the Central Western Slopes service area, and—with the exception of the company's HF sites—is the largest of Broadcast Australia's transmission sites with respect to electrical supply requirements.

A number of radio services are broadcast from Mt Cenn Cruaich, including five ABC FM programs, and various radcomms, such as GRN—the Government Radio Network. Moreover, the site broadcasts analogue and digital TV services for the ABC, Southern Cross Broadcasting, Prime, SBS and WIN TV, and also provides communication services for Telstra, Optus Mobile and Vodafone.

Power project

According to Broadcast Australia Energy Systems Engineer, Gary Cafe, the progressive installation of national and commercial DTV services onsite resulted in the maximum power demand exceeding the ratings of critical systems components. "We were beginning to see overheating problems, as the cooling systems could not be run to full summer design specification to meet the extra heating load of the new equipment," said Gary. "Furthermore, many of the power system components were approaching their design end-of-life, and this was beginning to cause reliability issues."

The company decided to upgrade the power systems at Mt Cenn Cruaich, and Gary was heavily involved from inception to completion in the ensuing project. "The upgrades involved the fabrication of a new main switch board, modifications to the emergency power plant controls to allow break free transfers, the replacement of cabling and distribution boards, and minor repairs to the underground service tanks," he said.

One important element was the addition of complex sub-metering of all major consuming circuits on site. "This ties in with our Energy Efficiency Opportunities program," said Gary. "It will allow us to closely monitor power consumption, and identify where savings potentials exist."

Maintaining the service

Given the site complexities, the project has progressed extremely well. "Challenges that needed to be overcome along the way included restricted site access due to floods and fallen trees," said Gary. "However, the biggest challenge was to keep services operational while moving a 30-year old switchboard to make room for its replacement. Throughout the project we achieved our goal of keeping planned outages to an absolute minimum."

The project has been completed successfully, with the final stages of commissioning now underway. "With improved site capacity, the cooling systems can finally be run to their full extent, as needed," said Gary. "Not only will this improve reliability on site, but this upgrade has also been a key project to enhance the robustness of the network as a whole." 

 

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