Since 1999, Baltimore, Maryland-based Brightview Senior Living has been providing seniors with a vibrant place to live. The company builds, owns and operates more than 40 award-winning senior living communities along the East Coast – and is growing. Its new Brightview Fair Oaks community is expected to open this summer in Fairfax, Virginia. Brightview Fair Oaks will feature resident apartment homes for independent living and assisted living as well as specialized Memory Care for people living with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
Partnering for Seamless Delivery of a Complex Project
Every successful power systems project is a collaboration across stakeholders to deliver a shared outcome. This project is no exception.
For Brightview Fair Oaks, it is important to be able to continue resident services uninterrupted. The owner does not want a power outage to disrupt residents’ lives or require resident relocation. When creating the plan, a cross-functional team from Kibart Consulting Engineers, ASCO Power Technologies, Northwest Electric and Curtis Power Solutions agreed: load shedding is key.
System design called for a 600 kW, 120/208V, 3 Phase mtu diesel generator set with a sound attenuated enclosure and sub-base fuel tank. Three circuit breakers are included, including one that is very large and rated 2500 amperes. Nine ASCO 7000 Series Delayed Transition Automatic Transfer switches – some with load shedding capability – range from 150A to 1200A.
If the building experiences a load beyond what the 600 kW generator is sized for, the transfer switches start shutting off other loads. There is a sequence of loads that are first to shed, second to shed, third to shed, depending on where the load falls. Which means, in event of a power outage, there will be enough power to run the building for days, so residents wouldn’t have to leave the facility unless they choose to.
“There are always a lot of moving parts,” commented Bryan Noble, Field Applications Engineer at ASCO. “I am proud of how Curtis and Kibart came together with ASCO to come up with the best solution for the customer,”
“We were able to design a system with the multiple shedding requirements that the client required,” said Nadine Hawkins, Associate Principal at Kibart. “It was a seamless effort.”
Minimizing Challenges Through Planning, Collaboration
Challenges such as having enough space to install the equipment and sound attenuation are common with these kinds of jobs. For the Brightview project, planning ahead and collaboration helped to minimize the impact of any challenges the team encountered.
Before the groundwork started, the team created an underground conduit plan for the multiple transfer switches and gear. Together, Northwest Electric and the Curtis Power Solutions professionals navigated familiar obstacles while getting the underground roughed in and the generator and transfer switches set in place. Having the equipment readily available while the project was under construction aided a smooth progression.
“Seeing the large number of conduits in the ground and having everything work as planned makes us very proud,” remarked Ryan Troutman, Project Manager at Northwest Electric. “Together with Curtis, we took a difficult job and made it appear clean and simple.”
“Curtis Power Solutions is always willing and ready to help with problems that crop up,” added Wayne Porter, Vice President at Northwest Electric.
Once the equipment installation is completed by Northwest Electric, Curtis Power Solutions will perform a Certified Factory Startup on the equipment.
“We are very fortunate to have been awarded six Brightview projects in the region,” said Curtis Power Solutions Senior Vice President and COO Paul Koch. “In each case, we have supplied a mtu generator set and ASCO automatic transfer switches. Each site requires six to 10 automatic transfer switches and has a sophisticated transfer switch load shedding scheme to make them work properly together.”
Concluded Koch, “The expertise of the Curtis Power Solutions technical team with our supplier partners has made these projects go very smoothly."