PPS Powering Football Stadiums In The Fight Against A Pandemic

With the country currently in the midst of a pandemic on a scale never before seen in modern times, mass vaccination centres have given us a glimpse of hope in the fight against an invisible and deadly enemy.

These centres have been opening at large scale events and hospitality sites, including football stadiums around the country. It means clubs have been playing their part in supporting society by offering their facilities for use by the NHS to support the fight against coronavirus.

One such club is Leeds United, which has provided its home at Elland Road, as a vaccination centre for vulnerable members of the public, as well as health and care staff.

While the emergence of these vaccination centres at football stadia is great news, they cannot operate without sufficient planning and facilities management. Arguably the most essential service for a vaccination facility is a robust and resilient power supply, to support the site’s medical equipment.

West Yorkshire-based back up power specialist PPSPower has been called in to install the temporary back up power supply at Elland Road’s vaccination centre and has been proud to support this essential community service.

The national provider of generator and UPS power and service maintenance solutions has already been supporting Leeds United with its power needs for more than 10 years and maintained the stadium’s matchday generator last season as it celebrated winning the Championship title and a promotion to the Premier League.

Steve Peal, Managing Director of PPSPower, explains how the vaccination centre installation has been a different challenge, but a hugely rewarding one for the firm:

“Normally at a football ground such as Elland Road we would be installing a back up generator to power the facility for fans attending on a matchday, but this is obviously a totally different scenario.

“The vaccination centre needed a generator to supply power to the essential equipment being used to treat people, including lighting and the refrigerators used to store the vaccine drugs at optimum temperature for use.

“It is absolutely critical that while these centres remain open they have a constant power supply and there no failures. They provide a potentially lifesaving service and rely on electricity to keep them in operation.”

The centre at Elland Road will be set up in a self-contained space, enabling a safe and efficient delivery of the vaccine. While in operation, it will provide jabs to thousands of high risk patients.

Steve adds: “Fortunately we are very familiar with the site layout of Elland Road, having worked here for so many years. Our engineers are therefore able to plan the installation of the hire generator and mobilise very quickly, so that we were able to have the site powered up and ready to use as soon as possible.”

Despite the opening of the vaccination centre, Elland Road will continue to host matchdays and there are hopes it will be able to safely accommodate the return of fans once restrictions are lifted.

To protect their assets from potential power outages clubs are urged to invest in protection systems from a trusted supplier. A generator set provides back-up power protection, when combined with a UPS this back-up solution ensures there is no break in supply. Combine this with a bulk fuel tank and this solution will continue to power the key services it is connected to indefinitely (providing the fuel tank topped is up and the equipment is maintained.)

PPSPower’s successful installations have led to the firm scoring several ongoing maintenance contracts, with on-call repair and maintenance services, planned preventative maintenance and upgrade installations for several other UK football clubs including Burnley, Swansea and Ross County in Scotland.

To find out more about PPSPower’s generator and UPS services available to stadiums nationwide, visit Generator & UPS Maintenance | PPSPower