West Palm Beach Water Treatment Plant West Palm Beach, Florida Requirements:

8 MW Power Generation capacity consisting of 4MW of temporary rental power and 4MWe of permanent emergency generator sets with paralleling switchgear fast tracked for a 10 week delivery.

Problem

The City of West Palm Beach took a direct hit from Hurricane Wilma on October 26th, 2005. Florida Power and Light had upwards of 6 million residential and business customers without power. When Hurricane Wilma hit the City of West Palm Beach, it knocked out power to the Water Treatment Plant and also destroyed the existing Back-up Generation System. This in turn shut down the main water supply to entire West Palm Beach Community. The City of West Palm Beach made a desperate call to FEMA and FEMA put the city officials into contact with Philadelphia Electrical Equipment Company (PEECO).

Solution

PEECO immediately coordinated the rental and interconnection of 4000KW of temporary capacity and the water plant was up and running in record time. PEECO then started the process for the permanent upgrade and the removal of the damaged system. In less than two days of the catastrophe the engineers of West Palm Beach and PEECO came to agreement on PEECO’s supply of (2) 2 MW Caterpillar sound attenuated enclosed packages and PEECO Freedom iGear Paralleling Switchgear. PEECO had the generator sets in stock but they were the wrong voltage. PEECO had new generator ends wound in 5 weeks and made the exchange in less than 8 days. The integration of all equipment and conversion of the existing control system to accommodate the new generation equipment was performed by PEECO Engineering Services.

Result:

"Philadelphia Electrical Equipment Company is a vital partner to the City of West Palm Beach. PEECO committed and delivered within 9 weeks was an impressive accomplishment so we certainly made the right decision". Stated Ken Reardon Director of Public Utilities for the City of West Palm Beach.

Speaking on the efforts and professionalism of the West Palm Beach Administration Len Wenger Vice President of Sales for PEECO stated "I’ve never seen a city administration pull together as a group to make something of this magnitude happen so quickly, absolutely unprecedented. We’re happy when our customer is happy".

To hear more about the project from the Mayor and Utilities Director of West Palm Beach hit the play button below.