SDA Engineering was the turnkey contractor chosen to design, supply, install and maintain a 3.1MW gas-fired cogeneration at the RMIT city campus in Melbourne.
Though SDA have experience with rooftop installations in crowded areas, such as 530 Collins St Melbourne and Adelaide Uni, this project presented some unique challenges: installing equipment on the 15th floor from a busy Melbourne CBD street with demanding craneage restrictions, as well as a new embedded generator connection to the already crowded Melbourne CBD power grid. We met these challenges and installed some 140 tonnes of equipment on top of the building, including a new structural steel building level which accommodates the 2 × 1.55MW generator packages, heat recovery systems, radiators, transformers and fault limiting reactors. In addition to the co-gen plant, SDA also replaced the hot water boilers in the adjacent boiler room.
This installation was successfully completed on time to provide 3.1MW of electrical power and an additional 3.1MW of hot water to RMIT, as part of its broader Sustainable Urban Precincts Program A (SUPP A) administered by Siemens. The plant is fully automated with performance metering and a comprehensive control system allowing for remote control by SDA maintenance staff, as well as connections to the site’s BMS and to the Citipower control room.
After commissioning of the project, SDA was awarded an long-term maintenance contract with incentives to maximize performance.