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| Featured Customer - Cascadia PM |
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Power in Paradise
Frontier Power engineers an innovative gen-set package for a remote Hawaiian site
Hawaii's Big Island is like no other place on
earth, with its lush rain forests, arid deserts,
and snow-capped mountains.
Mauna Kea is the world's largest sea mountain.
On the shoulder of Mauna Kea, Hawaiian
cowboys, known as panilo, drive cattle on the
historical Parker Ranch. It's remote there, but
even cowboys can stay connected thanks to a
nearby telecommunications tower perched atop a
2.4-kilometer (8,000 ft.) elevated site on the ranch.
The site is remote and requires a three-hour
climb in an off-road vehicle, sometimes passing
through clouds. An absence of power lines
makes gen-set power a necessity. So when
Cascadia PM was hired to locate a dependable
power source for the tower that could operate
remotely for extended periods, they turned to
their John Deere engine distributor Frontier
Power Products for an innovative solution.
With expertise in building custom gen-set
packages, the John Deere engine distributor
engineered a high-altitude gen-set package designed around two Tier 3 PowerTech E 4045T engines driving 60-kW Stamford generators. Frontier Power developed a Long Run Oil System™ that stretches the engine
maintenance intervals to 3,000 hours without
sacrificing the life of the engine. The system
includes a specially designed bypass oil-filtration system that continuously filters the
oil and provides additives to maintain the total
base number (TBN) of the lube oil.
Mounted in a 6-meter (20 ft.) weather-protected
enclosure, the gen-sets feature a dual-source transfer switch that alternates their hours of operation. The running unit acts as a prime-power set, while the other set is in standby mode. If, for any reason, the prime-power unit is unable to perform its role, the standby set will automatically start and assume the prime power function. The shipping container also houses a 1,135-liter (250 gal.) diesel fuel day tank whose fuel levels are automatically maintained by an electric transfer pump system that delivers diesel from an external 30,274-liter (8,000 gal.) fuel tank.
"Frontier Power engineered a really nice
package that was cost effective," says Dave
Mertens, project manager for Cascadia PM.
"Frontier is first on the list of the vendors
I would go to for another project."
The John Deere-powered gen-sets serve as the sole source of power to the cellular equipment at the tower site. "It has to be reliable," says Dave. "John Deere has a long-established
reputation for reliability."
Engine: John Deere Tier 3 PowerTech E 4045TF285 — a 67 kW (90 hp), 4-cylinder, 4.5L, turbocharged diesel engine. Distributor: Frontier Power Products, Delta, British Columbia, Canada (604) 946-5531, www.frontierpower.com
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