Award winning naval support

HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales are the two largest vessels ever built for the Royal Navy. These colossal ships were constructed at Rosyth and are 65,000 tonne vessels, 280M long and 40M wide !

For this project we were responsible for the shore power requirements. The Addison scope included for the design and installation of two 33kV feeds from their Portsmouth Grid Substation to a new substation at Middle Slip Jetty, some 2 miles away and two 33kV circuit breakers that were adopted by SSE under our NERS accreditation agreement.

Our scope included; HV and M&E Design Co-ordinator / Principal HV and M&E Design Engineer / HV and M&E 3rd Party Checkers / HV and M&E Project Management / HV Commissioning Managers /HV Energisation Engineers / Mechanical Design of Drinking Water and Fire Fighting / Civil Design of the Substation Building / BIM Co-ordinator / CDM co-ordination role.

Ground Breaking
Powering the Navy

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Volker Stevin appointed Addison Project to support them on this prestigious project based at HMNB Portsmouth which involved the expansion of the existing port to house the new aircraft carriers, the HMS Queen Elizabeth and the HMS Prince of Wales. These happen to be the largest vessels ever to be built for the Royal Navy. They are 65,000 tonne vessels, 280m long and 40m wide which can carry both fixed-wing fighters and helicopters. In total 3 million cubic metres of clay, sand and gravel were removed from the harbour – covering the size of over 200 football pitches!

Addison supported Volker Stevin on the M&E package associated with the port expansion. Along with the reconstruction of the existing jetty and berthing facilities, the port required a dedicated high voltage electrical supply which is where Addison assisted.

Led by Addison’s Roy Austin, who was acting as M&E Design coordinator, HV engineers completed the HV Design, fault calculations and load studies required. The substation is now complete which supports a 13MVA 11kV 60Hz generator. This generator feeds an 11kV switchboard which in turn feeds a high voltage cable boom that connects to HMS Queen Elizabeth and enables the aircraft carrier to switch off the engines and be fed electricity from the national grid. The cable boom itself is both the largest and the first fully automatic cable boom in the world.

The whole system is controlled from a remote control room by a dedicated SCADA scheme which means that the entire operation is automatic once the connection to the ship is made.