BEMS solution for Severnside Energy Recovery Centre

Project title: Severnside Energy Recovery Centre

Location: Bristol

Client: VVB Engineering

Service: BEMS & Smoke Control

Project Background

The Severnside Energy Recovery Centre is in the final stages of its construction on a brownfield site adjacent to Seabank Power Station and the former Terra Nitrogen plant at Severnside, near Bristol.

When complete the centre is anticipated to be capable of processing up to 400,000 tonnes of non-recycled waste, with capacity to generate up to 32 megawatts of electricity. This concept, which has been developed over the past 10 years, will also generate the heating for the entire building.

Delivered by owner Sita UK, the facility will provide new treatment and recovery operations to manage residual household waste from West London, which will arrive by rail.

Photo © Atkins Walters & Webster

The Project

The Client

Group SCS was brought in by VVB Engineering in August 2015, working for main contractor Sir Robert McAlpine, which is carrying out the work for its client Hitachi Zosen Inova AG. Initially, we were brought in to provide the BEMS (Building Energy Management System) to operate the heating, chilled and hot water systems, ventilation and five air handling unit (AHU) plants, with every office having independent FCU (fan coil unit) control for user comfort.

Our Involvement

Following the successful approved design of the BEMS, VVB Engineering tasked us with supplying a damper monitoring system and natural ventilation packages. The natural ventilation system regulates the temperature within the process plant which is critical to its operation. This has been integrated into the BEMS package for full control and monitoring. The total cost for the BEMS, natural ventilation, dampers systems and electrical installation is in excess of £1.25 million.

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Our Solution

Group SCS’s main challenge was to understand what the building, the mechanical and electrical system and the process plant required, ensuring we offered the best quality and value for money in a short period of time. Our hard work and research during the design stage ensured that we produced great BEMS which will add value for the client and optimise energy usage at every level.

We are providing a fully integrated bespoke graphics system which controls and monitors all of our systems. Some of the integration protocols that we have been using are: Energy system – ModBus and MBus; Natural ventilation – ModBus/IP; Damper system – BACNet/IP.

John Kavanagh, Senior Project Manager at Group SCS, explained: “Due to the tight contract deadlines, it was critical that Group SCS’s own in-house panel-building facility in Dorset manufactured all controls in record-breaking time.

“SCS manufactured more than 30 MCCs (motor control centres) for this project. One of the control panels is more than six metres long and was designed and manufactured in just four weeks from order.”

Matt Davies, Commissioning Engineer at Group SCS, said: “This project has been so challenging due to the scale of projects and the technical challenges associated with fully integrating so many systems of different network protocols. It was a joy to see all the systems from one powerful head graphics package.”

BEMS to operate the heating, chilled and hot water systems, ventilation and five air handling unit (AHU) plants, with every office having independent FCU (fan coil unit) control for user comfort

Damper monitoring system

Natural ventilation packages.

Mike Jackson, Group SCS Pre-Construction Manager:

“There are so many diverse systems on this project, all communicating in different protocols, but we managed to get them all linked and talking to each other using Priva controls and a Niagara headend.”