Small hydro power plant

stembera · July 30, 2011

Hello world

my project is not so great but I really enjoyed it. Our company is specialized in control systems for small hydro power plants (up to 5MWe). Last year we faced interesting demand: Our customer wanted to put his 90 years old power plant into unattended, fully automated operation.

The plant is located in the northern part of Czech Republic (village Viska, district of Liberec). It is equipped with three Siemens synchronous generators powered by Francis turbines, 200kW each. Output power works with 3300V voltage.

My mission was to create a program for unattended startup, run and shutdown of the three machines. Furthermore, it was necessary to ensure optimization of the operation of individual machines depending on the flow of water in the river. The third task was to realize emergency shutdown of machines in case of electrical or mechanical failure.

Vision 570 with 7 external I/O modules was chosen as brain of the system.

First serial port of OPLC was connected to Cinterion MC35i Terminal GSM modem to enable remote access and for sending / receiving SMS. The second serial port communicates with three Woodward MFR13 grid analysers, every for one generator. It supplies data for evaluating of electrical parameters. Furthermore, system is equipped with fast voltage, frequency and vector protections, connected to digital inputs.

Despite initial doubts the commissioning of the new hardware and software took just a few weeks. Now the power plant works in fully automatic operation for more than six month without failures.

On attached pictures you can see the 200kVA generator from 1928, the original control panel, part of the new one and new M+R cabinet (the UNITRONICS modules are located in the upper line). The picture was taken in the time of testing so some temporary wires are visible.