SOUTHERN NEVADA WATER AUTHORITY

Electrical Retrofit Project

SNWA owns 5 large pumping stations taking water frrom Lake Mead to serve Las Vegas and neighboring cities and towns in southern Nevada.  These pumping stations were built in the 50's and had become obsolete, hard to maintain and inefficent.  SNWA embark in a project to refurbish these pumping plants and contracted Power-Tech to provide design services for this project. PTEI provided engineering services for the retrofit of the electrical and control/instrumentation system, medium and low voltage, for 5 large existing pumping stations and emergency generation of the water treatment facility. Each pumping station consisted of about 12 large pumps (1500hp) driven by 4.16kV synchronous motors. A mezzanine level was designed and built to accomodate the new electrical equipment (Switchgears and MCC's). The project also included the automation of the pump by installing dedicated PLC's to each individual pump as well as a master PLC for the entire plant, with an HMI system.  The new system was placed in service without major plant operational disruptions or forced outages.