UNIVERSITY MAINTENANCE CASE STUDY

Trinity Powers a University Electrical Upgrade with a Smart Solution</h2

From UBC to U of T, Harvard to Oxford, universities all have one thing in common: they need reliable power to do their best work.

Lecture halls have lighting and AV equipment, libraries have digital databases, laboratories have all manner of centrifuges, fish tanks and servers, and the list goes on.

When our client called looking for a 400kW generator for a project at an historic university in Ontario, we knew that the best approach would be an intelligent one. And we weren’t wrong – our team of experts did some research and came up with a solution that didn’t require a generator at all. Here’s how we did it.

The university needed to gut and replace the equipment in the school’s electrical room, and they had brought our client on to do the job. With over 40 years of experience in electrical construction across a wide array of industries, this client was the clear choice for the project.

Initially, the Trinity team had provided a competitive price for the electrical contractor’s generator request, but as we looked at the project specs, we realized we could do better: using a transformer rather than a generator, we designed a solution that would use the school’s existing infrastructure to power the project.

Using the existing 600V feed on-site, we supplied a 1200A panel to distribute the loads (two 300A feeds). From there we supplied two 300kVA 600V 120/208V transformers. One of the transformers fed directly to a load with 100 feet of cable and the other transformer fed into a second 1200A panel equipped with 4 x 150A and 1 x 200A breakers.

Not only did Trinity’s solution save the client a significant amount of money, it also reduced the project’s environmental impact, and ensured that it was able to move forward as efficiently as possible. Saving time, money and the environment? That’s a smart plan.