Opened in 1891, the Ryde Pumping Station does not lack history or day-to-day impact for the people of northern Sydney.
It’s been through several different eras, beginning with Pumping Station No. 1’s opening in 1891, adding Pumping Station No. 2 (commissioned in 1921) to meet increased needs, demolishing No. 1 in 1961, and electrifying No. 2 in 1982.
Nowadays it provides about 16 per cent of Sydney Water’s total supply, says Nihal Balasuriya, Service Delivery Officer with Sydney Water, and who currently manages the station. Balasuriya has been directly involved with the site since 2009. Before joining Sydney Water in 1991, he worked in civil engineering academic and consultancy work in Sri Lanka, Singapore, Nigeria and Thailand.
“I work as part of a team, led by an area manager who is responsible for product and service outcomes for customers... about one million people altogether. Out of this approximately 670,000 people are served from the Ryde pumping station,” he tells create.
“We are accountable for resolving very complex matters regarding network operation... Basically we have got to make sure that the customers get continued supply with the required standard and quality.”
When the first pumping station was opened, it had a capacity of 20 megalitres per day. For the last 12 months, average daily demand is around 215 megalitres, roughly 85 Olympic swimming pools’ worth. Peak demand in that period was 318 megalitres.
Keeping up with an increasingly-populated and thus thirsty portion of Sydney has required upgrades in capacity, as well as upgrades in technology to do the job more efficiently and effectively.
The last major set up upgrades, says Balasuriya, were completed in 2009, at a cost of $35 million.
“Currently this pumping station has got 13 pumps, and with the upgrade we replaced six existing variable state drives and their motors with new technology, variable wattage, variable frequency drives, and upgraded seven of the fifteen direct online fixed-state motor starters,” he explains.
“And also we upgraded the control manifold and all the isolation valves, and also we did a major upgrade on the station monitoring and control system, including our Icat interface, which is our remote telemetry network.”
That round of upgrades also saw oil lubrication systems for five major pumps replaced and improved control responses implemented. Three flow meters were installed on the three large pipes providing water to the pumping station. This has enabled continuous monitoring of these pipes, which provide suction water to the pumping station.
“Also we upgraded the high voltage and low voltage supply control systems,” adds Balasuriya.
Energy management protocols
Power usage for the station averages about 450,000 kilowatt hours per month and for the last 11 months, power cost was roughly $2.6 million.
“This pumping station operates under energy management protocols. That means during the peak period, we do not operate this pumping station” says Balasuriya.
“And we get the supply coming from another area, feeding into the system.”
Generally, the station is not run between 2 pm and 8 pm on weekdays.
In October, the significance of this piece of the city’s infrastructure - which was NSW State Heritage listed in 2002 - was recognised with an Engineering Heritage National Marker from Engineers Australia.
Among the innovations over its history, recognised were the early use of turbine-powered pumps by Pumping Station No. 1, a unique coal delivery system with loaded wagons delivered to the boiler house’s upper level and coal emptied directly into hoppers, and the overall delivery to seven major northern Sydney reservoirs via the station.
Of its significance to daily life in Sydney, NSW Minister for Energy and Utilities Don Harwin said the city was - pre pumping station - “ not only in continual drought, but water was particularly scarce north of the harbour.”
Asked to nominate one major innovation over the site’s history, Balasuriya cites the implementation of an Icat system in the early-1990s, allowing the station to change from “fully-manned to fully-unmanned.”
Keeping the site running nowadays includes weekly preventive maintenance of various components, and monthly condition monitoring and vibration monitoring of pumps. Findings from this may lead to condition assessment of a pump in isolation by maintenance experts.
Balasuriya’s team is also charged with resolving the complexities of running the network, namely performance and resilience planning, and risk management, making sure supply to those 670,000 customers continues.
“Part of operations involves system optimisation and contingency planning and execution; for example, if one of the pumps is not available, how do we supply the area?” he says.
“Generally we have a standby capacity at the station. But there could be a time when the standby pump is taken out for maintenance and another pump fails. So we have flexibility and the resilience in the systems to make sure continued supply is maintained.”