AN UNINTERRUPTED WATER SERVICE

 CLIENT: Private Water Pipeline

LOCATION: Durbanville

THE CHALLENGE

The Durbanville Private Pipeline facility serves as one of the main water sources for 36 wines farms and businesses between Durbanville and Philadelphia in Cape Town. This Pipeline provides treated water for irrigation purposes to all the organisations along the pipeline 24 hours a day all year round.

The effects of load shedding has caused this service to have frequent down time due to the fact that the water line needs to be re-primed after each load-shedding. The repriming process together with the load-shedding time was preventing water being provided along the line for anything from 4 to 8 hours in a day

THE SOLUTION

In consultation with the pipeline manager, we set out to deliver a back-up solution for the priming pump in order to keep the main line primed and provide low pressure water along the pipeline route during load-shedding.

This solution aids the main pumps when the grid power returns and the main pumps can then be put back online quicker without having to wait for the line to be primed before providing full pressure water along the line. For this design we used:

• 2 x 50 kW High Voltage Hybrid Inverters
• 2x 100kWh Lithium battery contingent 
• 100 kWp Solar Array

THE RESULT

Since this successful installation by Open Energy the client has enjoyed the backup power solution for its essential load during load shedding and unplanned power outages and the pipeline service continues uninterrupted.