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equipment

WaterLog Series H-350 data logger


PROJECT: Hydro Power Plant Refurbishment & Upgrade Project


For this project, services were provided for a Project Manager and Lead Control System Engineer for an EPC contract (Engineer, Procure, and Construct) with a west coast city to resurrect an abandoned 3.5 megawatt capacity hydroelectric power plant facility. The facility ceased operation in 1998 due to numerous design, maintenance, and operational issues. In addition, the power house sustained a major flooding event in December of 2005 inundating all of the plant equipment up to an elevation of approximately four feet.

Under the senior management and control system guidance, engineers and construction craft completely refurbished all damaged, obsolete, and nonfunctional pieces of equipment from as large as the turbine/generators to as small as individual flow transmitters, switches, and relays. There was not a single system in the power house that remained untouched at the completion of this project.

A major challenge that was overcome was the replacement of obsolete and nonfunctional mid 1980s electronic and computer controlled equipment. These included the following:

- SCADA and plant controls upgrade to Allen-Bradley PLC
- Generator excitation equipment upgrade to a Basler Voltage Regulator
- Westinghouse generator protection relays upgrade to Schweitzer relays
- Auto Synchronization device upgrade to a Basler Auto Sync device
- Upgrade of the Transfer Trip communication devices including recloser

In general terms, lead Project Management and expert control system engineering services were provided for a complete plant rebuild. This included engineering design, construction and operation. All the work scope was completed even though this plant that had been historically problematic. The end result was to upgrade the plant to a proven standard demonstrated by the extensive years of experience in the power generation utility industry.

RESULTS


• Provided the design engineering of all material specifications, software configurations, and startup commissioning of the upgraded river flow wireless monitoring system that used spread spectrum wireless data transmission technology.

• Provided the engineering design establishing the new designs for all aspects of control for this hydro facility including unit startup/shutdown, synchronizing, load control, and local/remote control.

• Completed modifications to the river flow data logging transducer system such that it could provide a equivalent 4-20mA signal to the spread spectrum wireless SCADA system. Coodinated all software and hardware/wiring mod's.

• Fully commission the spread spectrum wireless SCADA system used to transmit a remote river flow downstream measurement back into the hydro power house for load control.

• Completed the design work and commissioned a stand-alone microprocessor magnetic speed sensor device used for turbine roll-up, generator excitation, and over speed protection.

• Designed an innovative automatic river flow control logic that managed two water turbines and three sizes of bypass valves to a user specified flow set point. This logic overcame a 7 minute lag, turbine trips, and twin bypass valve operations.

• Conducted all of the final start up activities for both hydro units, bypass flow control valves, and all miscellaneous sub-systems. Successfully placed in operation the full power generation facility.