Month: March 2021

The Emirates Air Line
CategoriesCase Studies

The Emirates Air Line

Installing a Leading LV Switchgear System for Emirates

AF Switchgear were selected to supply the LV switchgear package for the Emirates Airline cable car project in London.

LV Switchgear is low-voltage switchgear that is designed to safely and efficiently distribute electrical power.

Sponsored by Emirates Airlines and built by Doppelmayr, the entire cable car system and Gondola stations were built at a cost of approx. £60,000,000.

The cable car link, connecting the Royal Docks to the East and Greenwich to the West, was built within a tight timescale to ensure it was ready for the London 2012 Olympics.

Travelling over 1 Kilometre, the Gondola’s pass over the River Thames at a height of 30 metres.

At full capacity, the Emirates Air Line was designed to carry up to 2,500 people per hour or 260,000 people per week to suit the demand at peak times.

More than 13 million journeys have been made on the Emirates Air Line since its opening.

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KAO Data
CategoriesCase Studies

KAO Data

Supplying an Industry-Leading Switchgear Solution

AF Switchgear was appointed to supply KAO Data with high-quality switchgear built to the latest IEC 61439-2 standards. It needed to meet the demands of the modern data centre as well as the client’s concurrent maintainability requirements, critical for the uptime.

KAO Data, situated in KAO Park, Harlow, Essex, is a site of historical significance witnessing one of the most important technological breakthroughs of the post-war era – the invention of the Fibre Optic Cable. The discovery in 1966 was so significant that Sir Charles Kao (affectionately known as the Father of Fibre Optics) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2009.

Work began in 2017 on the £200m, 35-acre campus replacing existing laboratories owned by Northern Telecom with immediate upgrade of the site substation increasing power capacity to 43.5MVA feeding four freestanding data centre buildings.

Standardisation of design & delivery were an important factor to consider with repeatable design and standardisation required across the facility. In addition, visual coding was used in the way of clear and bold colours applied to power equipment to assist circuit identification within the A, B & C distributed redundant power scheme.

Phase 1 In 2017, AF Switchgear supplied 2 x 2000kVA Package Substations, 1 x 1600kVA Package Substation, 3 x UPS Output Switchboards, 2 x Landlords Switchboard plus 2 x Landlords UPS Switchboards.

Phase 2 In 2019, there was a significant design change. The three package Substations remained the same, but changes were made to the UPS Input/Output board designs, integrating them. This not only saved space within the switch rooms themselves but provided additional IT technical space to complement the existing Data Halls for the client.

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Strathclyde University
CategoriesCase Studies

Strathclyde University

AF Switchgear secured the order to supply a range of LV Switchgear for The University of Strathclyde Technology and Innovation Centre in Glasgow.

The project outline was to supply and install six primary LV Switchboards, working closely with the appointed consulting engineers throughout the designing process to ensure it would meet customer requirements.

This was considered a flagship project for the University in conjunction with its many industrial partners, who work side-by-side in a state-of-the-art building in the heart of Glasgow.

Key stakeholders research solutions to challenges in sectors central to economic regeneration in Scotland and further afield, including power, energy, photonics, sensors, advanced engineering, pharmaceutical, manufacturing and bio-nano systems.

The Technology and Innovation Centre (TIC) is based at the heart of the city and is the cornerstone of Scottish Enterprise’s new International Technology and Renewable Energy Zone (ITREZ), a global economic hub to bring innovative businesses to Glasgow to sit alongside the University.

AF Switchgear are manufacturers of Switchgear, Power Distribution Units (PDUs), Substations, Panel Boards, and other equipment to help efficiently and safely distribute power.

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Red Bull Racing
CategoriesCase Studies

Red Bull Racing

AF Switchgear have completed two projects for Red Bull Racing at their Factory HQ in Milton Keynes.

The first project was to provide a much-needed power upgrade to Building 3, occupied by Red Bull Technology. This division supports a range of Red Bull associated sports including stunt flying, motocross, stunt bikes, BMX and diving and was also the major sponsor and driving force behind Felix Baumgartner’s historic freefall from the edge of space in 2012.

For this project, AF Switchgear supplied an outdoor containerised package substation, consisting of an 11kV Transformer, Ring Main Unit, LV switchgear package, and a weather-proof outdoor GRP housing.

AF Switchgear was then asked to supply Power Distribution Units for Building 2, which is entirely occupied by the racing car construction division of Red Bull’s Formula 1 team, employing over 600 people.

For this project, AF Switchgear supplied bespoke manufactured LV power distribution equipment all designed to customer requirements. AF Switchgear also provided a power upgrade to the Gearbox and Pneumatics areas.

Techincal Director Mike Harris
CategoriesInternal News

Techincal Director Mike Harris Retires

After 23 years of loyal service at AF Switchgear, our Mike Harris retired his role yesterday on the 31st March as Technical Director.

He started his Engineering Career in the West Country (Cornwall to be precise!) well over 50 years ago before moving onto senior roles at Applied Energy and Brentford Electric.

Mike’s achievements over the years have had an immense impact on our company and through ingenuity and passion, completely changed the way we build and operate today.

It is no exaggeration to say, the whole team has benefited from Mike’s experience and technical guidance over the last 23 years, and for that, we owe him a debt of gratitude.

Fortunately, though we are not having to say goodbye quite yet!

Mike will be working for AF Switchgear in a part-time consultancy role from next month, assisting in product development and technical assistance.

So from all the staff at AF Switchgear, we wish you well Mike and we look forward to working with you on the other side!