CHPE Astoria HVDC Converter Station

Network & Communications InfrastructureSecurity Systems IntegrationEnergy & Utilites

The Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) is a new high-voltage direct current power transmission project, with HVDC cables carrying 1,250 MW of clean Québec hydropower 339 miles to Queens and cut New York’s carbon emissions by almost four million tons a year.  A new state-of-the-art HVDC converter station was built in Queens - a critical hub that transforms direct-current power to AC before feeding it into the city’s grid.

Industry

Energy and Utilities

Owner

Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE)

Service/Expertise

Network & Communications Infrastructure

Security Systems Integration

Project Delivery Type
Design-Bid-Build

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Factory testing of the converter station's communications network in our lab, fully built out and simulating on-site conditions.

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One of three communication cabinets fabricated for the Astoria CHPE project, housing firewalls, distribution layer switches, servers, and public address system hardware.

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Door card reader enclosure part of the HVDC converter station's access control system.

VI Contribution

Vasquez Integrators provided design, build, and testing services for the network, CCTV, public address, and access control systems for the new HVDC converter facility.  VI engineers performed factory proof-of-concept testing to validate customer provided designs, identifying oversights and issues long before the job site’s physical construction.  VI fabricated and provisioned field cabinets housing Layer 2/Layer 3 switches, firewalls, servers, media converters, and patch panels that support the station’s communication network and backbone. Every enclosure was pre-wired, labelled and factory-tested to compress onsite schedule and guarantee plug-and-play commissioning.  VI also provided and provisioned the HVDC station’s comprehensive security systems – door card readers and alarms for physical access control, high-definition cameras and Genetec video management for CCTV security, and a digital public-address announcement system allowing safety announcements to be triggered from security workstations or automatically on alarm events.

Rigorous testing was performed on all installed equipment and communication/security subsystems.  Site installation tests verified physical installation - cabling, fiber splices and device addressing; final Site acceptance tests validated end-to-end workflows for network, access-control and public-address functions.