This page is not a current Christchurch City Council document. Please read our disclaimer.
|
Giant generator saved from scrap heap 
As no tenders were received for the 12.7tonne Paxman diesel generator that had finished its days at a Council pumping station it was destined for the scrap heap.
Then the manager of the wastewater treatment plant, Bernard Crossen, stepped in and decided the nearly 50-year-old engine could be restored. In 1957 a team of English engineers helped install the engine, along with a similar one, at the new Pages Road wastewater pumping station. One engineer later stayed on to become a shift engineer at the pumping station and at the treatment plant in more recent years. The Paxman engine continued to serve as a standby generator at the pumping station. In case of a power interruption the generator would supply electricity to the powerful pumps and so prevent an environmental disaster, such as wastewater overflowing into the river. But with age it became unreliable and a new standby generator was obtained. Paxman was then destined to be scrap but Bernard Crossen decided, although it was unreliable, it could generate electricity in a situation where its reliability was not an issue. So it was taken to the treatment plant and a team of engineers moved in. "We have some very skilful technical people here. "I am lucky to have this self-motivated team, which accepted the challenge to re-commission the engine. "It was a spare-time project and was a good learning curve for the younger members of staff," Mr Crossen says. The engine was finished recently and the City Council Energy Manager, Leonid Itskovich, estimates that the engine will operate for about 60 hours a year in the winter-peak demand periods when power is expensive. The treatment station is the only plant in the country that is self-sufficient and, in fact, "exports" more than three million units of power to the national grid each year. The re-commissioned engine is expected to save the Council about $40,000 a year, says Dr Itskovich. "Last year we implemented a number of energy efficiency projects but this one is probably the most elegant and cost effective," he says. The Council has a special budget for energy efficiency projects, which last year amounted to savings of $2 million. The second Paxman engine is kept for its spares. All the re-commissioning work was done in- house and a programmable logic controller now controls the engine.
pic: Admiring the Paxman are (from left) front, Bernard Crossen, manager of the treatment plant, Roger Sutton, Orion’s general manager (trading), and rear, Neik Franssen, plant maintenance superintendent, and Kevin Barker, electrical control engineer. |
