Client: Network Rail
Type of works: upgrade of electrical systems and supply of emergency lighting.

In 1999, Network Rail started an upgrade of the electrical systems in five of the sub-terrain stations on the Merseyrail Network. Ventilux was chosen to supply the original Netcom 5 system together with the static inverter systems and the emergency lighting sub-distribution board modifications. The project ran for a number of years with completion in 2001. Netcom 5 was a panel-based system that pioneered the use of CAN (controller area protocol), providing a robust data protocol designed for environments with high frequencies. Each panel had a maximum of 10 channels with each channel designed to monitor 100 nodes connected to it. The system covered all public and staff access areas including the platform edge lighting.

Ventilux supplied all the emergency lighting systems for the all areas, with over 3,000 luminaries and 11 central battery systems. The fittings are fed by static inverter central battery systems ranging from 15 to 25kVA. Many of the emergency luminaries used on the project are mains luminaries that where adapted and retested by Ventilux. The ability to adapt emergency luminaries from other manufacturers for use with the system is a significant feature of the Ventilux offering. The units where modified in Ventilux’ own workshops and retested to ICEL, BS and international standards.

In 2005, Ventilux upgraded all five stations to its computer-based Netcom 5XP System, the upgrade facilitated in the removal of the panel-based system and a number of Control Module Interfaces connected to the PC via an Ethernet network. This system is upgradable to handle a total of 253 control modules, with 25,300 devices in total.