Although emergency power systems typically are thought of as crucial for public health and safety, for casinos in Las Vegas, NV, keeping power running nonstop to slot machines and other gaming operations is considered just as critical.

Everyone agrees that the lights should never go out in Las Vegas - and not only the lights but also the slot machines, the surveillance cameras above the blackjack tables, and the Keno board in the 24-hour restaurant. This is why such new-generation casinos as the Bellagio and the Venetian have installed massive emergency power plants that are on a par with what typically is found in data management and telecommunications centers.

"All the lights, all the slots, all the air conditioning - if they lose the electricity, they're dead in the water," says Keith Lozeau, sales manager at Cashman Power Solutions in Las Vegas, which provides the generators for 80% of emergency power systems on the Las Vegas Strip. "And that's not counting lost revenue." This is why the 7 million-ft.² Venetian complex-casino - comprising 3,000 luxury hotel suites, high-end retail shops, the Sands Expo Convention Center, and a network of canals that mimic the real thing in the city the hotel was named for - has installed five 2,000-kW Caterpillar 3516B diesel generators (2,934 hp). The gensets are controlled as part of an elaborate electrical power distribution and management system designed by Electrical Systems Consultants (ESC) in Fort Collins, CO, in partnership with General Electric (GE) Industrial Systems, that utilizes GE's state-of-the art power management control system (PMCS), ESC custom-designed software, and InTouch human-machine interface software from Wonderware FactorySuite. The standby operation is part of the Venetian's facilities infrastructure that among other functions allows the complex to manage 15,500 tons of chilled-water capacity, 125,000 lb. of steam and 6.8 million gal./hr. of hot water for heating, and more than 360,000 gal./hr. for guestroom showers and sinks (all powered with electricity off the grid), the result of the management's decision to operate as a power distributor rather than a retail power consumer.

At the heart of the Venetian's energy management system are two transformers that step down the 138,000 V of electricity the complex receives from Nevada Power to 25,000 V for internal distribution through 41 substations. The cost of the electricity is less because the utility bills the Venetian at a transmission rather than a distribution rate. Each of the main transformers has a bank of feeder breakers, with one feeder breaker from each unit feeding a substation, which in turn is equipped with a tie breaker. "This means," says Michael Helbert, assistant chief engineer in the Venetian's facilities division, "that we have what we call 'double-ended substations,' with a feed off the number-one transformer and a feed off the number-two transformer to the same substation and an open tie breaker in the normal position. If we were to lose one of the transformers or part of the loop out there, it would automatically throw open the breaker at the substation and pick up the load. On eight of the double-ended substations, one side is for standby power."

Keeping Things Running "No Matter What"

"There is the philosophy that it is the interest of the economy in Las Vegas to keep things running no matter what happens," says Ken Miller, assistant fire protection engineer for the Las Vegas city fire department. "Among the gaming industry, as well as the fire and building departments and city management, the thought is 'the better the backup and redundancy, the better things will be all around.'"

"If we lose power for a minute or two, people are out of the building," says Helbert. But Richard Pidruzny, energy facility manager for San Diego, CA - based Sempra Energy Solutions, which owns and operates the Venetian's backup power plant along with its massive cooling, steam, and hot-water operations, disagrees that the emergency power system at this huge complex, or in Las Vegas generally, represents an unusual amount of backup capacity. "Nobody can foresee how long a blackout is going to last," says Pidruzny. "And although rarely will one go more than a couple of hours, we're set for four days, which is more than anybody ever needs."

Both Clark County and Las Vegas City codes are specific about fire and life safety functions that must be up and running within 10 and then 60 seconds of any power loss. "The code doesn't specify how much power a facility has to have," says Miller. "What it does is outline the type of life and safety equipment that's required to be on emergency power. It's up to the electrical engineer or the design team in conjunction with the owner to appropriately size the minimum-sized generator to meet those requirements. The idea of the code is to buy enough time to get the occupants safely out of the building. But the owner may decide he wants his entire building and all of its operations to remain fully functional in the event of a blackout. Some properties, for example, are using only one-third of their installed generator capacity for emergency services. This means if there's a power outage, there's enough standby capacity that the guy playing craps wouldn't even know that something happened."

Although the International Building Code and the National Electric Code were developed for high-rise buildings, in Las Vegas these requirements are applied to the entire hotel-casino complex. "As large as some of these complexes are, the fire department has put its foot down and required the same level of life safety throughout," says Miller. Clark County, which has actual jurisdiction over the Strip where the large hotels, casinos, shopping malls, convention centers are located, enforces the same requirement unless there is a four-hour fire separation between the high rise and the rest of the complex.

According to Lozeau, the requirement that select fire and life safety systems must be back on-line in 10 seconds was a major factor in the Venetian's decision to use the five Cat 2,000-kW gensets, which at the time the choice was made were the largest machines that would meet the 10-second start requirement. "The other reason for the multiple machines, a kind of happy byproduct if you will," says Lozeau, "is the fact that you now have redundancy in the system. If one machine fails, you can selectively shed load and still keep the essential functions up and running. After fire, life, and safety, the usual priorities are the casino loads - slot machines first and then mechanical loads, such as chillers, et cetera."

Fire!

"The way I think of the fire and life safety equipment required to be powered within the 10-second window is that you have to know there's something going on, so you have to hear it, which means basically horns and strobes," says Douglas H. Evans, fire protection engineer for the Clark County building division. "And you have to be able to get out of the building, which means you have to be able to see where you're going. This means power for exit signs and exit illumination and lighting circuits for elevator cabs and stairs, plus water control switches and the fire command center and your communication systems and lighting for the fire pump room and at the emergency generator. What has to be up in 60 seconds is the high-power-demand items. Elevators have to recall, and they have to be switchable so the fire department can use them for emergency purposes. Also, your fire pumps and smoke control fans and hence your fire pump controller and status panels have to be up in 60 seconds." Helbert estimates that at the Venetian the draw for the entire fire and life safety requirements is 3.4 MW, which could be fed with two generators. "With our motor-operated circuit breakers, we can prioritize our load shedding, and most of the equipment is programmed so if one of the generators dropped out, the circuit's load would be shunted automatically. The breakers will open in sequential order right down the line."

"The operation of the generators is pretty much hands-off," says Kevin Hartig, ESC's project manager. "The initial startup is done by protective relaying. From that point on, the PMCS takes over. Let's say we lose power, one generator comes up, and as soon as that one generator is up to speed and its load breakers close down on the gen bus, by relaying we close a tie breaker on a substation that feeds all the emergency substations. We have programmable logic controllers [PLCs] in every substation throughout the facility, and these locally control each substation. So the automatic throw-over scheme when they lose power is done by a local PLC that we programmed in each substation. That way if it loses communication with the system, it still has a certain set of tasks that it's responsible to perform. Instead of one big brain making decisions, the control is distributed.

"There is a specific PLC that resides in the facility where the generators are located and acts as a director for the PLCs that are in the standby substations. These are the only PLCs that do any kind of control during standby power. So let's say you have 20 substations and only eight are standby subs; only those eight are going to be doing anything during emergency power operations. The eight are responsible for all the staging and breakers; they do all the load-shedding and load-adding operations in concert with whatever the paralleling gear is doing. The one that's acting as the director brings the data in and massages it for the parallel gear and does certain calculations to figure in the reserve factors and that sort of thing. And then that data is made available to the other standby PLCs. If you lose a genset, then certain priorities are lost and the associated or corresponding feeder breakers are tripped and then reset. If another generator is added, we close those loads back in.

"In a facility this size, it can literally take 15 to 30 minutes to get to a substation. With the Venetian's PMCS, I can be on-line in 10 seconds, and if we're on normal power, I can tell exactly what we're drawing. I can tell if there's a fault somewhere. If we're on generator power, I know exactly how many generators are running and which emergency loads have closed. I can go in and change a priority on another one."

Everything Up and Running

"When the county fire department does a high-rise facility on one of our major properties," says Joe Noble, Clark County deputy fire marshal, "we get what's called a Fire Protection Report, which we review in conjunction with the county building department. One of the specific sections in that document identifies what life safety devices or fire-protection equipment is installed within the facility and therefore what requires emergency power. So when the electrical engineer goes through to perform his calculations, all of that emergency equipment is identified, and he simply searches out the required voltages. Then he works with the owner to provide a generator that's sized adequately to power whatever else the hotel property wants powered."

"At the Venetian," says Helbert, "after fire and life safety, surveillance is first and foremost in coming back up. Actually it's covered with battery-powered UPS units so the gaming lights and the surveillance systems, along with the fire alarm system, never go down. Expensewise, however, you can only afford to do that for so long, so you rely on your generators to come up and pick up the load for you."

Helbert agrees that the key element in the Venetian operation is the GE PMCS, which makes it possible to remotely complete such functions as turning breakers on and off. "The PMCS has battery backup so it never goes down," says Helbert. The system's centrally located management and control consoles utilize InTouch human-machine interface software, which provides the Venetian's system managers with a graphic representation of any substation, power line, breaker, or panel and mimics the real control panels in the power systems exactly as if the staff were on the actual plant floor.

The Venetian is about to break ground on another 3,000-ft. tower, and Helbert says he's set to make recommendations about priorities for discretionary standby startup for this next go-around. "The pump skids for the towers, for example, don't necessarily have to be on standby - it's not life critical, but you don't want toilets backing up. So if we don't put the pumps on standby, let's at least make sure they're on the other end of the standby substation so we can throw the tie and backfeed if we have the capacity left. Same with the 24-hour restaurant. When we were testing this backup system, we were considering knocking them out. While we may not want the restaurant on standby, we'd like the ability to backfeed them."

"We don't care how many generators are on," says Hartig. "We just look at what available kilowatts are left over and stage load accordingly. Take chillers. Let's say we have all five generators running and we've got 10 megawatts and we're only using 4. Even though the chillers are not essential, let's go ahead and get one of those back on-line. We can send a signal over to the building management system that would allow this or that chiller to automatically come on. It's not essential, but if you've got the power, let's go ahead and make use of it. The system operators can analyze the historical data that we log into the PMCS to determine where they can make priority changes to make better use of generator capacity." Hartig projects that the Venetian will add two more gensets when the 3,000 rooms come on-line, for another 4 or 5 MW.

Genset Modifications

Lozeau reports that the five gensets that make up the Venetian's backup power plant are equipped with oversized batteries and multiple starters. Extra large radiators were included to accommodate the high ambient temperatures in the desert (115-120°F in the summer), and engine heaters were added to heat the coolant and keep the engines at 100°F or greater, which he says "is a really crucial link in the ability to come on-line in 10 seconds." At the Venetian, the generators take up 20,000 ft.² of space in a room with an 18-ft.-high ceiling. The switch gear is from Automatic Switch Company.

"In Las Vegas, you need about twice as much ventilation as is typical," says Lozeau. "And even with this, you'd be surprised where people put generators. They don't consider that this equipment needs air and that if they overheat, they'll shut down. This happened in one of our older properties that expanded and built a wall in front of the generator. Management never tested the generator under 100% load, and when they did have an outage, the air from the generator hit the wall and recirculated back and shut the unit down. A woman who claimed she fell down the stairs in the dark sued and won a multimillion-dollar settlement."

The Venetian gensets also are equipped with silencers - "although nothing exotic" because the location of the plant is in a self-contained building attached to the Sands Expo where noise is not a significant issue. The Venetian's generators came equipped with Caterpillar's electronic fuel system, which among other functions automates fuel-air mixture because, as Lozeau points out, standby units have a tendency to overfuel, especially on startup. Ten thousand gallons of fuel (the four days' supply) is stored in an underground tank and fed to the individual generators, each of which has its own individual fuel tank, housing enough fuel to run the genset for the two hours required by code. According to both fire departments, there are no limits to what can be stored in an underground tank as long as the requirements of the building and fire codes are met. Aboveground storage has to have two-hour fire-exposure protection.

Quarterly maintenance includes checking batteries, belts and hoses, and fluid levels; testing engine safety; and particularly checking controls, which Lozeau points out often can go wrong in machines used in standby operations. "People sometimes take maintenance for granted because the machines don't run that much. But maintenance materials deteriorate even when the machines aren't running." Annual maintenance includes oil and filter change. The generators are subject to a weekly startup and a monthly test with load.

With all of the extra power, it would seem logical that the backup systems would be used to peak shave, especially during summer. Helbert reports that Nevada Power has contacted the casinos about going on generator power during high demand but so far has not called upon them to do so. One difficulty is air-quality regulations. Except for a power outage, the facilities are only permitted to operate in test mode, and casinos located along the Strip "corridor" cannot exceed 50 tpy of overall emissions.

And that five-generator blackout everyone's planning for? So far it hasn't happened. "I've seen hospitals," says one generator serviceman who works the Las Vegas Strip, "that weren't as tense about being in the dark."

Journalist PENELOPE GRENOBLE O'MALLEY is a frequent contributor to environmental publications.

DE - May/June 2004