SiteHUB Safety Hubs for a NSW Battery Storage Build
Location: Regional New South Wales
Project Value: Solar & Battery Energy Storage
Company Awarded:
We supplied wireless site alarms and custom safety hubs for a solar and battery energy storage build in regional New South Wales. No fixed point on site was within easy reach of every crew.
The project
The site generates solar power and stores it in grid-scale batteries across multiple compounds. It spreads over open farmland and is one of the larger battery energy storage builds under way in the state. Work fronts move as construction progresses. Crews split across array rows, battery enclosures and access roads through the day.
It is a horizontal build on a large footprint. Work areas open up paddock by paddock, and the safety equipment has to open up with them.
The problem: help too far away to reach
A hardwired alarm assumes a safety station never moves. On a site that keeps growing outward, that assumption fails. Every new compound needs another cable run. Every relocation means termination work all over again.
Distance made the second problem worse. A solar farm in open country sits a long way from emergency services. Safe Work Australia's guidance on remote and isolated work calls for a system that lets a worker raise the alarm immediately, wherever they stand on site. A fixed alarm system could not scale with a build that kept expanding.
What we supplied
The project has taken more than 50 custom safety hubs so far, 40 of them already deployed, with the rollout continuing. Each hub is a steel SiteHUB station. It carries first aid, fire response and spill kit equipment scaled to the hazards in that zone, plus a Cygnus SiteProtect call point for evacuation and first aid alerts.
Cygnus units talk to each other over a mesh network. A hub placed at a new compound joins the alarm coverage with no new cable run.
Why it suited the build:
- No cabling between hubs, and no repeaters to install as the site grows
- Hubs relocate on fork pockets as work fronts shift across the property
- First aid, fire and spill equipment held in one place per work zone
- Call points raise a first aid or evacuation alert from wherever a hub sits
- Configuration set by crew size and hazard type, not a fixed template
The outcome
Forty hubs are in service across the site. The programme continues toward more than fifty stations as new compounds come online. Crews get one point of response per work area, instead of first aid, fire and spill equipment scattered across separate vehicles and sheds.
Planning safety coverage for a site that will keep growing? Call 1800 273 473 and we will work through the layout and hub numbers before you price it.
