How Smart Energy Management Helped A Smart Motorway Upgrade

Highways England selected Costain as one of their build partners for the £4.5bn Smart Motorway Programme Alliance (SMP Alliance).

The SMP Alliance will work to add capacity and deliver safety improvement works across the strategic road network in England. Under the ten-year framework, the partners will focus on using technology to efficiently deliver a key element of the government’s second Road Investment Strategy. As part of the initiative, Costain plans to leverage new technologies to upgrade the country’s road network.

The Challenge

This project required additional temporary power for on-site offices, stores, 24/7 CCTV and lighting. After a site survey it was apparent the available grid connection could not support the demand from the site, so a temporary power solution was required. This would normally be provided by fuel powered generators, burning hundreds of litres of fuel per day. However, Costain reached out to Sunbelt Rentals UK to explore solutions that would reduce their carbon footprint.

The Solution 

The team at Sunbelt conducted a site survey and identified that the peak load could be suppressed by utilising energy management technologies, which would immediately reduce power requirements and associated costs, CO2 and fuel consumption. An Energy Management System (EMS) is essentially a smart distribution board, it will identify non-essential loads and turn devices off when not in use, suppressing the peak load. This typically means your power source, in this case a generator, can be down sized, meaning less fuel consumption, lower fuel costs and less CO2 emissions. All
whilst still providing a robust power solution. On this particular site without the intervention of an EMS a 300kVA generator would be needed to support power requirements, running 24/7. But there was a much smarter way..

The Result 

The team identified an EMS could reduce the peak load, enabling this site to downsize from a 300kVA to 150kVA synchronised generator set. With 2x 150 generators provided, one for primary power, and the other as back up only (given the
critical nature of the 24/7 CCTV requirement). This immediately reduced fuel consumption from an average 29 litres per hour to an average of 20 litres per hour (based on a 50% load). When you apply the fuel savings to the 19-month period the generators are needed for, the numbers are significant.

A 9-litre fuel saving per hour over a 30 day period this equates to 6,480 litres of fuel saved per month and a reduction of 16,800 kg’s (16 Tons) of CO2 saved (based on 1 litre of diesel producing 2.6kg of CO2). Apply this to a 19-month period and the savings
are even more impressive.

By utilising an EMS system and downsizing the generator this site saved 123k litres of fuel and 320 Tons of CO2 over 19 months, whilst still providing a robust 24/7 power solution.

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