GESA makes the sewage treatment plant Hannover cleaner, more advanced and more efficient.
In the course of modernization, a new energy center will bring the entire Hannover sewage treatment plant up to date in terms of electrical engineering.
Herrenhausen, the oldest sewage treatment plant in the Klärwerkverbund Hannover, will be extensively modernized. In this context the GESA Elektrotechnik GmbH is also building a new and state-of-the-art energy center at this location. All electrotechnical processes will be controlled and monitored from there.
The services provided by GESA in this project include almost all electrotechnical requirements such as control technology, software and process control system, switch gear for power supply, installation / cabling, fire protection and fire alarm system, as well as exterior illumination and emergency lighting. All trades and machines, their functions, as well as the complex measuring technology had to be electrotechnically joined and will be monitored and controlled through a central software in the future. This repeatedly demands for creative engineering services, for example to make interfaces “compatible”, as well as dedicated project management, especially in the coordination of the various partners and suppliers. In an advanced sewage treatment plant, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, construction engineering, gas reservoir including “gas lines” and the mechanical “pipework”, to name just a few trades, have to mesh perfectly. The coordination of all this requires a lot of experience, research and especially an intensive communication amongst all project participants.
The exemplary high standards of the Stadtentwässerung Hannover were an additional challenge. Municipalities usually use plant identification systems for their plants in order to be able to clearly assign all machines and measurements. The codes for this usually consist of five to ten digits. However, Hannover is farsightedly using codes with 17 digits and will be able to later control several sewage treatment plants centrally without any problems, because their codes include information about the location and there is no duplicate code across all locations. Currently, those codes are assigned manually which means that the depositing in the software requires utmost meticulosity, because just one transposed digit could have a disastrous impact. Prospectively, the GESA specialists hope that solutions with scannable QR codes will be included in the tenders.
Also, the highest possible safety for the employees is considered for the standards. This means that each machine not only has to be assigned to a “switch-off-option” in the dedicated switchgear, but there has to be an additional repair switch directly on the machine. This prevents a motor from being accidently switched on again, even tough repairs or maintenance on the machine have not been completed yet.
Finally, IT security is very important to the Stadtentwässerung Hannover. For example, proof has to be furnished that all installed safety-relevant network components were delivered by the manufacturer to the site unopened.
These requirements are also fulfilled by the software used by GESA for “safety shutdowns during gas or fire alarms”. The software is especially encrypted and any modification or even manipulation is automatically documented and will possibly trigger an alarm – another standard, in particular for the gas warning system and the fire alarm system, which will also accumulate in the new energy central.
The new sewage treatment plant Herrenhausen will be a milestone in the Klärwerksverbund Hannover. The GESA specialists can rightly be proud of their pioneering work.
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