ConED Ravenswood Powerplant

This project consisted of a packaged duplex Aurora fire pump system containing one electric pump with 100% redundancy provided by a diesel driven Aurora fire pump. Both the electric and diesel engines provide 350 horse power. The pumps are capable of flowing 3500 gallons per minute. The entire system was engineered by Aurora in-house engineers complete with heat, ventilation, lighting, a 2 hour rated fire wall, and across the line 480 volt three phase control panel. This system shows that solid state soft start is not required on a majority of systems.

Of note, I learned something new from this project with regard to control panels. While I would normally recommend soft start for a motor of this size, this project proved to me that it is not always necessary. Even if a solid state is specified it will still need to be tested using an across the line pull handle every month. If engineers could keep this in mind, they could save owners a lot of space and money,being as they could just sepcify across the line, instead of Solid State soft start controllers.