Photo Caption: Advanced Electronics has supplied intelligent control panels for fire detection and smoke damper control as part of the first phase of the King’s Cross St. Pancras uderground Station redevelopmen.

Integrated Fire Safety System for King’s Cross Underground Station

Advanced Electronics Limited has supplied intelligent control panels for fire detection and smoke damper control as part of the first phase of the King’s Cross St. Pancras Underground Station redevelopment. Phase 1 included construction of a new Western Ticket Hall located in front of St. Pancras station and the expansion of the current Tube Ticket Hall. Phase 2, which will also use Advanced’s intelligent control panels, involves the construction of a new Northern Ticket Hall located to the west of King’s Cross station and is due for completion in 2009.

The fire detection system uses sixteen MX-4400 4-loop analogue addressable fire alarm control panels interfaced to Hochiki fire sensors and loop devices. Twelve smoke damper control panels, which are variants of the MX-4000 series fire panels, are used to control 140 dampers around the station. This allows all 28 control panels to be networked together using Advanced’s Ad-NeT network, which operates over 2-core fire resistant cable, to provide an integrated fire safety solution. The system was installed for Metronet Rail Group by Siemens Building Technology and interfaced to the station’s central SCADA system.

Advanced also developed special damper interface units for this project, which are installed on the smoke damper control panel loops. Each unit provides an output to drive the damper open or closed and 3 monitored inputs, which monitor the open, close and fault conditions of the damper. Once an open or close command is given to a damper an automatic fault condition is generated if the corresponding status input has not verified the action within a specified time. LEDs on the smoke damper control panel indicate the status of each damper.

The flexibility and power of the MX-4000 series control panels are used to provide intelligent control for a number of applications including addressable emergency lighting control and escalator monitoring using linear heat detection. All these control panel variants support the Ad-NeT network allowing fully integrated solutions to fire safety problems to be easily implemented.