Energy-efficient supply protection for NZ film production studio

World-leading and four-time Academy Award-winning visual effects company Weta Digital, based in Wellington, New Zealand, provides full digital production services for feature films from all over the world.

To deliver these world-class digital production services, technology is a critical element for Weta Digital, which is in the business of producing visual effects in a robust and efficient manner for shows such as James Cameron’s Avatar and Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tin Tin: The Secret of the Unicorn.

Central to the production facilities is a state-of-the-art data centre. One of the key principles in the design of this data centre was to maximise the efficiency of energy consumption, which led to Weta Digital deciding to install an AVC2 active voltage conditioner from ABB, as one of a number of key support elements.

The Weta Digital team instructed their lead engineering consultant, Richard Snow from Intellex, to investigate the most energy-effective options for power protection of their new data centre installation.

Snow comments: “On investigating the site’s operational requirements, we found that not all of the site’s computing loads actually required UPS hold-up. The Weta facility could accommodate an infrequent power outage on quite a large proportion of loads, but they still wanted to maintain a very high level of voltage protection. As a result, we chose ABB’s AVC2 active voltage conditioners that were manufactured locally here in New Zealand. With a system efficiency approaching 99%, very significant energy savings were achieved over the alternative of UPS protection, where the best we could expect was efficiencies in the mid-90s percentage range at realistic loading levels. Our chosen approach means Weta can achieve very significant energy savings.”

The challenge for both the client and the consultant was to find a cost-effective solution in maintaining an ongoing high level of voltage protection. What was needed was a system that would run the whole electricity supply to the site and provide clean supply voltage to the sensitive equipment in the facility and also be installed in the data centre along with other high-end computing equipment. In addition to this, the client sought a guarantee of significant savings in energy consumption.

At the time of writing, one of the Active Voltage Conditioners had been installed at the Weta data centre, with the second unit having been delivered to site and awaiting installation and commissioning.

Local ABB sales manager Fiona Hodgson, also based in Wellington, was involved in all aspects of the project through to commissioning.

Hodgson comments: “The active voltage conditioner proved very easy to commission and offered a very high level of protection against voltage sags and surges. It also provided an online regulated supply. Weta’s double redundant design means ongoing high levels of protection are assured.”

When ABB was approached to suggest a possible solution, the AVC2 Active Voltage Conditioner was proposed. The conditioner is an inverter-based system that protects sensitive industrial and commercial loads from voltage disturbances. The AVC2 gives fast, accurate voltage sag correction as well as continuous voltage regulation and load voltage compensation. This system also provides the required equipment immunity from the level of voltage sags that are anticipated from the local AC supply network.

The AVC2 conditioner has load capacities of 160 kVA up to 30 MVA and offers operating efficiencies that exceed 98%. It also offers an extremely fast response to three-phase sags down to 70% and single-phase sags down to 55% on the AC supply network.

Some of the key benefits derived by Weta from the AVC2 system included fast (sub-cyclic) response, simple user controls, rugged overload capability, short-circuit protection, extensive diagnostics that include fault log and voltage event data logging, ethernet connectivity, continuous ‘online’ regulation, correction for voltage vector phase angle errors created by faults in the supply and voltage unbalance correction.