Influent Pump Motor Control Center Evaluation

The City of Amherst, Ohio’s Water Pollution Control Center (WPCC) staff installed one new wet-weather pump at their existing WPCC headworks building that originally had four influent pumps. The fifth pump was needed to help handle wet weather flows. As a temporary measure, the utility staff disconnected one of the existing pumps to connect the new wet weather pump. The client needed a permanent power solution for the new pump to be able to pump at full capacity with five pumps in service.

Amherst officials reached out to the Wessler Engineering team to evaluate their electrical capacity to ensure the electrical load from the new pump could be added to the motor control center, thereby allowing staff to put the fourth influent pump back into service.

Wessler completed a site evaluation and prepared a technical memo that summarized the evaluation method, identified available power capacity and determined the upgrades needed for the fifth pump. An electrical plan sheet was prepared to show the proposed electrical configuration and an updated one-line diagram was provided as a deliverable.