Drives are air handling choice at London landmarks

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Aug 24, 2001

Altivar 58e variable speed drives from Telemecanique have been chosen to play a key role in the air-handling equipment which is being installed in two of the tallest buildings in London

Altivar 58e variable speed drives from Telemecanique, a brand of Schneider Electric, have been chosen to play a key role in the air-handling equipment which is being installed in two of the tallest buildings in London.

The buildings, which form part of the prestigious Canary Wharf development, will ultimately be occupied by leading international financial organisations, HSBC and Citigroup.

The air-handling equipment which is developed and installed by Industrial Acoustics Company (IAC), is designed to take full advantage of the energy savings which are made possible by using Telemecanique variable speed drives.

The Canary Wharf installation uses two variable speed drives for each floor of the building - a total of more than 200 drives for the whole project.

The majority of the drives are rated at 11kW and 15kW.

All of the drives are fully enclosed IP55 units chosen from Telemecanique's latest Altivar 58e range, and are operated in variable torque mode to maximise energy savings.

As standard, these units incorporate a motor protection device and a contactor, but the versions supplied for the Canary Wharf project are specially customised by adding a small Sarel enclosure at their base.

This contains equipment which makes it easy to interface the drives with the power distribution and building management systems.

"Given the tight timescales of modern building projects, ease and speed of fitting are vital factors for us," said Geoff Crowhurst, director of IAC's Standard Products Division, "so it was clearly a big plus when Telemecanique offered not only to collaborate with us on the design of the drive systems we needed, but also to supply the customised drives completely assembled, wired, tested and ready for immediate installation.

As a result of its experiences with the Canary Wharf air-handling plant, IAC is now intending to use Altivar drives for future projects.

The company is also using a variety of other products from the brands of Schneider Electric, including Telemecanique control gear and Merlin Gerin circuit protection devices, in the Canary Wharf project and others.