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Alton Power

delta79

TS Member
Favourite Ride
Nemesis, Air
After Gary got this response from ATR,

In regards to the staggered ride opening times, as our park is expanding, we are having to stagger opening times due to the amount of power used if we were to open the rides all at once - it often causes an electricity black out in the surrounding area. Therefore we try to prioritise rides in close by areas together for our early ride time so that it is the most efficient way for our guests to enjoy the park."

I think its may be good to look at it closer that can be done on a general thread.

Some people have called this out, and I think on the whole they are calling it right.

The feed substation for the Alton area is the Cheadle 33kv to 11kv primary. Demand headroom 12.54MVA. Fault level headroom 14.37kv and is not a active network management zone substation.

The Weston Power map does not show Secondary substations, so this is the closest I can get for power feeds for Towers.

When they are talking about amount of power used, they are using it in the context of Peak power draw on start up. It is like pushing a car, at first you have really push to start it moving, then it become easier. So your peak in power use is getting the car moving. Its the same with motors and high power control systems.

There are large motors on site, one being the pump motors on the rapids. It is common practice in industry that when you have more than one star/delta starting motors (thats how big motor start) then they are started a intervals that allow the last motor started to get to speed. Lowering the power draw.

The other rides worked fine with the feeds they have. they have removed the flume, a high peak power ride replacing it with a low peak ride. So the power requirement is lower.

The intervals between start up can be seconds or minutes and keep from sending a supply requirement spike that would blackout the local area. Not the Hour they are alluding to.
 
So basically open the park at 10am and by 10.05 everything should be ready to go. By which time it's unlikely anyone will have gained entry to the Dark Forest, assessed the ride availability and left due to nothing being open.
 
Power surges is nothing new and nothing that can't be tackled by the electricity companies. They just turn up the power during an add break during a popular event being watched on the TV as every one goes to put on the Kettle all at once. So surely the local electricity company can do the same for Alton around 10am every morning :rolleyes:
 
Power surges is nothing new and nothing that can't be tackled by the electricity companies. They just turn up the power during an add break during a popular event being watched on the TV as every one goes to put on the Kettle all at once. So surely the local electricity company can do the same for Alton around 10am every morning :rolleyes:

Put it this way, the world has plenty of parks that has as many rides or more that Alton has, and plenty of them don't seem to have this excuse.

Another thing, surely Alton has teams of engineers who go round and sign off the rides on a morning? One would assume that these people can't be in two places at once, so surely while they are at Rita, they aren't at Thirteen? Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume the rides would be started up in a staggered nature anyway by these engineers before 10am?
 
So basically open the park at 10am and by 10.05 everything should be ready to go. By which time it's unlikely anyone will have gained entry to the Dark Forest, assessed the ride availability and left due to nothing being open.

Yes. I think the rapids would take more than 5 mins to get the water flow up to speed.

Power surges is nothing new and nothing that can't be tackled by the electricity companies. They just turn up the power during an add break during a popular event being watched on the TV as every one goes to put on the Kettle all at once. So surely the local electricity company can do the same for Alton around 10am every morning :rolleyes:

They use the frequency of the grid to work out loading at that time. 50hz is the standard. If it goes down there is not enough power in the system. Over 50hz there is too much power in the system.

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The rapids may well take more than 5 minutes to be up to speed.....remind me, what time do they start testing the rides?
 
I agree complete BS

The biggest power load is the rapids. All other coasters with their chain lifts stop and start through the day so if they can’t cope with the power demand at 9am when they start testing they would be tripping the National grid power constantly through the day. :rolleyes:

And the rapids won’t open till 11am anyway after all other ride are running
 
They would not trip the national grid. They would trip on site substations and local secondary substation safety devices.

The one factor i can not find data for is local loading outside the park. As secondary substation tripping is total load on it. That includes the village of Alton and the farms and houses around Alton and Oakmoor.

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I'm not sure it was necessary to do the calculations - their claim is clearly nonsense. What I wonder is whether the person who wrote the reply knew it was untrue, or whether they had been told to put that and they genuinely believed it?
 
Most modern motors will be inverter driven and ramp up to their full speeds rather than starting direct on line/star-delta. Ramping up does away with large start up currents.

I'm no expert on rides but would guess the smaller motors like the booster/lift hill wheels on thirteen will be inverter driven. You can hear the high pitched sound of inverter driven motors on Galactica's loading stations when the trains are leaving the station for example. Ramping up the motor speed also does away with the 'jolt' you get on some rides.

The pumps on the rapids and some of the lift hill motors are more than likely still direct on line. I'm only guessing though.

I think more modern rides like Mako in SeaWorld use inverters on their lift hill motors. Again that's only a guess but having watched the transistion from low to high speed on Mako's chain I believe it's inverter driven.
 
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So they are restricted by what they can draw of the grid?
Then you would go to the supplier and ask”how much”
Dear Merlin to get a new cable suitable for your requirements it would cost £lots.00.

Erm ok can I come back to you?
 
Hopefully they will upgrade their infrastructure soon as it doesn't sound very futureproof. I get that turning everything on at once could cause a power surge but don't understand how it's a problem now and wasn't before?
 
If this thing with the power is actually true, then it's probably only become a problem now because the park simply have less money to spend on making sure every ride is ready for 10am – as in, they don't have the money to pay park staff to come in as early as they used to to start up the rides anymore. So it's still Merlin's fault, really.
 
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