Active Power's Equipment Enclosure
Additional Info
Award Winner : Falcon Structures
Architectural Excellence : Active Power manufactures uninterruptable power system (UPS) equipment that smoothly transitions facilities from grid power to generator power. When Active Power’s customer requested a special shipping container enclosure for their UPS, Falcon Structures provided its expertise.
Falcon transformed a 40-foot conex box into a secure enclosure with protective features. Today, the container resides in an undisclosed manufacturing plant in Central America. The unassuming white exterior looks clean and professional but betrays no obvious signs of the high value assets inside.
The UPS system’s generator sits at one end of the container, and the flywheels and switch gears reside at the other. Technicians have enough floor space to walk into the brightly-lit enclosure and check on the equipment attached to interior walls. Cabling racks over head hold thousands of feet of wire in tidy arrays, keeping them out from underfoot.
Cost Energy Effectiveness : Typically, equipment shelters and enclosures are built from scratch. Choosing to base the structure with a 40-foot shipping container reduced the upfront fabrication costs. Active Power’s customer also reduced their costs with offsite construction by ensuring fast deployment.
Testing the equipment in Active Power’s facility prevented costly on-site technical difficulties. When manufacturing, every moment of down time reduces the number of products produced and ripples through all aspects of the business. Simply placing the container enclosure onsite and connecting it to the power grid was much faster than building a stick-built shelter and installing the UPS system onsite.
While the customer has no current plans to relocate their enclosure, they could easily do so. Should they choose to reconfigure their plant, the customer could quickly move the enclosure by crane—a much more cost-effective solution than demolishing the structure and rebuilding.
Green Building Description : N/A
Occupied Date : 9/19/2018
Production Start Date : 6/6/2018
Project Location City : Austin
Project Location State Name : TX
Technical Innovation : Instead of building an equipment shelter from the foundation up, Active Power’s manufacturing customer wanted to place their UPS equipment on the site, plug it in, and get back to production as quickly as possible. Offsite construction was the perfect solution. Falcon Structures cut and reinforced openings for industrial grade air conditioners in a 40-foot container’s wall. On the interior, Falcon installed spray foam insulation and perforated steel walls to insulate the structure and deaden the sound of the HVAC systems. Falcon added water seals and insulation to the cargo doors but left them fully openable so that Active Power could easily move and install their equipment inside the container.
Once the container arrived at Active Power’s plant, they were able to install and test the equipment in their controlled facility. Offsite construction made Active Power and their customer confident that the product would perform exactly as planned.
Total Square Feet : 320