TxDOT - 610/59 - Infrastructure Associates

Texas Department of Transportation - Pump Station DB6-2, PS4, PS5

Prime Consultant: LJA Engineering
E & I Engineer: Infrastructure Associates
Construction Budget: TBD

PROJECT BACKGROUND
Existing storm water flood mitigating systems at the intersection of interstate highway 69 and 610 loop inside City of Houston do not meet current need as evident by recent flooding of this intersection and resultant fatalities. TxDOT required that the existing pump stations four and five serving this intersection to be upgraded in size and capacity, and an additional new pump station DB6-2, be designed in support of the existing two stations. Pump Stations 4 & 5 were increased in size from a total combined horse power of 200 HP to 1000 HP and 600 HP to 1000 HP, respectively, and DB6-2 was designed to be around 200 total HP. New upgraded electrical service had to be designed for all three pump stations including an emergency generator sufficiently sized to start all pumps and operate the entire pump station in the case of power outages. Infrastructure Associates was commissioned to performed the electrical system design for these storm water lift stations as a sub-consultant to LJA Engineering.

ELECTRICAL DESIGN
IA engineers provided design solutions to address the increase in size and electrical service for pump stations four and five, as well as design solutions for the new station including, but not limited to: pump starters, one line diagrams, control schematics, site layouts, and CenterPoint coordination. All TxDOT pump stations are required to run during power outages, so the existing emergency generators (250kW at PS4 and 575kW at PS5) were evaluated with the new pump sizes and quantities, and determined to be insufficiently sized. After performing sizing calculations, it was determined that both pump Stations 4 & 5 required a new 1 MW generator each, to sufficiently start as well as serve all motor loads. It was determined that Pump Station DB6-2 could reuse the 250kW generator salvaged from PS4. All station were designed with new Motor Control Centers (MCCs) to be fed from a service entrance rated ATS, and included solid-state starters for the pumps. Construction is set to begin in late 2017.