Region:

Greece

Type:

Power Plant Upgrade

The challenge

  • Uneconomical operation of the power plant; diesel engines were not operating at their optimum performance level.
  • No capability of automatic operation of the plant according to the need of load.
  • No capability of automatic blackout recovery without the interference of a technician.
  • Often blackouts due to lack of modern control equipment. Serious problems to the electrical installations of all consumers of the island were caused.
  • Manual only control of the power plant’s produced power, voltage and frequency.
  • Control cards were based only on analogue control. Furthermore most of them had become obsolete during the years of operation.
  • Lack of any data recording system; no investigation of any incident could be executed.
  • Inadequate monitoring and alarms annunciation.
  • Lack of any remote command system existence.
  • Lack of technical support for complex problems.

MAS solution

  • Installation of completely new control panels including sophisticated Woodward EGCP-2 power management controllers for all diesel generators and Photovoltaic Park. New panels were also installed for three new feeder circuit breakers and for the service panel of the station.
  • Upgrade of all speed (governor) and voltage (AVR) control elements from old analog to new digital units.
  • Upgrade of all engine sensors (oil/water/fuel pressure/temperature/level) to 4-20mA which offer measuring and protection accuracy.
  • Implementation of a new plc system used mainly for total blackout recovery and power factor control. Data and alarm logging are also included while all station’s basic information is presented in a graphical way at plc’s dedicated HMI screen.
  • Installation of high-accuracy network analyzers for all main feeders of the power plant.
  • Central HMI (Scada) installation for monitoring and logging. Communication with diesel generator controllers, plc and network analyzers is implemented through Modbus protocol. All related information is presented with graphical and user-friendly way. Remote access (with security levels) is also fulfilled.

Result

  • High availability of the power plant system due to the new sophisticated control units that were installed.
  • Complete automatic operation of the station. Diesel generators operate according to load demand with full automatic start/stop and synchronize functionality. Furthermore, complete recovery from total blackout has been implemented.
  • Economical operation due to high performance level that the engines are operating.
  • Precise control of generators’ voltage and frequency. Improved control of transient load demand.
  • Monitoring and protection of all measured values of the power plant.
  • Capability of adding 1 or more new diesel generators which can run in parallel with the current installed units.
  • Electrical and mechanical data monitoring and recording of the whole plant.
  • User friendly HMI application with remote access from the central PPC offices in Athens.
  • 24/7 technical support.