Six years ago, Alpha Industrial Power supplied a turnkey AC and DC power system for an oil platform and floating processing facility off the shore of Vietnam.

Located about 135 kilometers north of the city of Vung Tau, the platform is installed in water 60 meters deep. The processing vessel has a receiving capacity of 60,000 barrels of oil a day with a storage capacity of more than 350,000 barrels. The Alpha powering solution included an Astra Uninterruptible Power supply system, P 45 battery chargers, multiple banks of Alpha SMU-E batteries and an industrial Automatic Transfer Switch.

Last summer, Alpha Industrial Power in Suwanee, Ga. received a technical service request for a failing UPS on the vessel, more than 8,000 miles away. With the remote location of the vessel, it would normally be difficult to get someone on site within the customer’s requirement of 48 hours.

By chance, Lan Doan, an Alpha Senior Applications Engineer, happened to be on vacation in Vietnam at the time. Lan was contacted on his cell phone, and flown by helicopter out to the vessel to provide the support to get the system up and running.

After completing the necessary service, Lan finished his vacation, and returned to the Suwanee office with a long-term service contract in place with the vessel and its US-based engineering firm.