ABB is providing a complete modular packaged substation, including 26 panels of UniGear ZS1 medium voltage (MV) switchgear and future-proof relay technology for a power network upgrade programme at one of the UK’s most important oil refineries.

ABB’s fast-track modular packaged substation service has been called in by Total Lindsey Oil Refinery (LOR) to provide a new 11 kV substation for an ongoing programme to upgrade the power distribution infrastructure at the site in North Lincolnshire. Working within a tightly defined project window, ABB will design, manufacture, deliver and commission a complete containerized substation, based on its compact UniGear ZS1 medium voltage (MV) switchgear.

LOR was established in the 1960s on a site five miles from the Humber River estuary and was the first UK refinery to process North Sea Oil. It is currently the country’s third largest oil refinery, processing 10 millions tons of crude per year.

LOR has embarked on a long-term replacement programme for its existing 11 kV and 3.3 kV switchgear. A fast-track solution was required for the replacement of the 1A/2B 11 kV substation so that the work could be completed within the tightly defined window offered by the current ‘T&I’ (Turnaround and Inspection) outage. Both the short timescale and space constraints at the selected location - right in the heart of the refinery - made it difficult to build a new substation building, especially in carrying out the substantial civil works to meet blast rating requirements. ABB was able to offer the ideal alternative in the form of a containerized substation in a blast rated enclosure, requiring only limited foundations and delivered ready to ‘plug and play’.

UniGear ZS1 switchgear
The containerized substation will comprise 26 panels of ABB’s UniGear ZS1 MV switchgear. The compact design of this switchgear, including front cable access, has enabled it to be configured as two front facing rows – 1 x 14 panel board and 1 x 12 panel board – joined via a low-level bus-trunking link. The result is that the substation will fit within a single, standard 6 metre container making it easy to handle for both transportation by road and positioning on site.

REA arc flash protection
To achieve a more compact solution, the containerized substation will use ABB’s innovative REA arc flash protection system that combines a unique light sensitive sensor technology with instantaneous and reliable fault detection, solid state trip outputs and an extremely fast total system operating time. This effectively eliminates the need for a conventional high impedance bus-zone protection scheme.

RELION future-proof relays
The innovation in the LOR compact substation project continues with the use of ABB’s RELION family IEDs (Intelligent Electronic Devices) to provide a future-proof relay solution for a variety of demanding functional requirements including generator protection, feeder protection, transformer protection and line differential protection. Initially the RELION units will operate on Modbus, but they offer the inbuilt capability for upgrading to the IEC 61850 communications standard for substations.

An important advantage of the RELION units is that, although they can operate via fibre optic links in new build substations, they are also ideally suited for retrofit installations where they can utilize existing copper pilot cables via a modem link. Preparatory site tests carried out by ABB prior to the contract award have already confirmed this communication capability at the LOR site, even over the worst case (longest) route.

RTU 560 remote terminal unit
To complete the substation communications solution, ABB is also supplying its RTU560 remote terminal unit that meets all of LOR’s local HMI (Human Machine Interface) requirements by enabling the new substation to be integrated within the previously localized 11 kV site network, providing remote access and control.

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