SHOPPING CENTRE CASE STUDY IN B.C.

Trinity’s Power Broker Model Locates Emergency Generator Despite Limited Availability

It’s the weekend. Your busy retail facility is doing good business when suddenly everything goes dark and the cash registers stop ringing. The main transformer on site has failed during one of the busiest shopping seasons of the year. What’s worse? When you call around for a generator to get things back up and running, none are available. What do you do?

If you’re experienced with emergency outages, you call Trinity Power. Our Power Broker Model was designed for situations just like this. Here’s how we saved the day (and the season) for a shopping centre that found itself in a situation very similar to this one.

The Client: A Top Independent Electrical Power Service Provider

With over 25 years in the power system industry, this BC-based client is diligent in ensuring their employees are certified and trained to the highest standards. Their services include routine maintenance, emergency services, engineering, and equipment testing and repair.

Their combination of experience and commitment to partnering only with the best in the industry has contributed to this client’s stellar reputation and impressive roster of longstanding clients.

The Challenge: An Emergency Outage and Low Equipment Availability

On a Sunday after hours, our client called looking for a solution to a big challenge: a shopping centre in BC’s Fraser Valley had experienced an outage that affected the entire building. Their main 4MVA 25kV – 12.5kV transformer had failed, and due to the size and voltage requirement, a temporary transformer would not be available quickly enough to restore power to the shopping centre in a timely fashion.

Opting to use multiple generators until a transformer could be located, our client encountered another hurdle: the generators they required were also in low supply.

Our Approach: The Power Broker Model Offers New Options

Despite the limited availability of generators, our client knew that Trinity Power would be able to find a solution. Our Power Broker Model allows us to not only source temporary power equipment from multiple partners across North America, it also allows the Trinity team to stay uniquely informed about the availability and location of any given piece of equipment, and often, to access units that others might not be aware of.

Despite extremely limited inventory, the Trinity team was able to source the required generators from our vendor partners. We supplied four generator rentals totaling 3.3MW:

• A 1MW 208V generator
• A 1MW 600V generator
• An 800kW 600V generator
• A 500kW 600V generator

We also supplied over 600 feet of camlok cable and provided refueling services.

This allowed the shopping centre to get back up and running quickly. However, with the generators consuming over 5000L of fuel daily, and the transformer repair scheduled to take at least three months, locating a temporary transformer was now a top priority.

Again turning to our rental partners, the Trinity team was able to locate a 7.5MVA 25kVA – 12.5kVA pad mount transformer in Pennsylvania. With Trinity Power managing the freight, we were able to deliver the transformer, along with 100 feet of cable in just over a week.

In order to make this happen, the team coordinated drivers to bring the transformer to BC from Pennsylvania, hired a local crane company to offload the transformer when it arrived on site, and arranged air freight to bring the cable in from Alberta.

The Result: A Quick and Economical Solution

With the rapid delivery of the generators, our client was able to bring the commercial building back online as quickly as possible, allowing its retailers to take full advantage of the busy shopping season. And the arrival of the transformer shortly thereafter allowed our client’s client to operate more sustainably and cost-effectively while their permanent transformer was being repaired.