The reality of electrical system redundancy in airports: necessity or whim?
The concept of redundancy is simple in itself: having a duplicated system so that in the event of a single failure, there is always an alternative.
“A zero has occurred!!!! Are you sure?”. This fateful phrase is one that an operations and maintenance engineer in the electrical area of any airport in the world never wants to hear.
You don't have to go far back in time, not long ago the airspace was closing in Belgium caused by a total power failure. Allow me to doubt that. Now I'll explain.
We'll set the scene. From an electrical perspective, the most serious What can happen is a total loss of electrical systems, meaning that the airport is without electrical power. This generally happens due to something that wasn't considered during the design phase, a lack of knowledge of airport culture, disruptions during construction work, or natural causes. Regardless of the reason, it occurs.
How to approach this for its solution could lead us to multiple approaches, but we will focus on just one, “the Redundancy model”, under the single-fault criterion.
The concept of redundancy is simple in itself: having the system repeated so that in the event of a single failure there is always an alternative. How this alternative is constructed is what gives it its complexity.
In the case of airport electrical systems, we could consider which is the critical system. Some would say generation, others the transport or paths of the energy, others the final equipment... In my opinion, they are all right.
This is where the important work of the electrical engineer comes in, combining all the boundary conditions, costs, technology, experience, and future forecasts that will strengthen and build robustness into the design, without losing sight that at an airport, the most important thing is that the plane manages to land, no matter what on land.
