United we stand, divided we fall
An overwhelming majority of US electric capacity comes from aging power plants, many of which will be 30 years or older by the end of the decade. A challenge faced by these venerable facilities is to monitor and control equipment that uses a wide mix of technologies from a host of different vendors. Case in point is the 1950's-vintage Antioch (Calif) cogeneration plant, owned by Gaylord Container Corp, Deerfield, Ill.
The 52-MW facility comprises two GE Mark V turbine controllers, one Coen heat-recovery steam generator burner management panel, two Action Instruments Action Pak I/O Plus data acquisition monitors, one Allen Bradley-based continuous emissions monitor, and one power boiler control system using GE Fanuc 9070 and 9030 programmable logic controllers. To integrate these varied systems into one operating platform, Gaylord turned to CSE Engineering, Concord, Calif.
Using WEB software supplied by Trihedral Engineering, Bedford, Nova Scotia, Canada, the CSE solution will allow operators to control the facility from one location, rather than using several independent single-loop controllers. The software reads 144 I/O points from the gas and steam turbines every 0.25 seconds. From the central control room, Gaylord can view customized piping and electrical schematics, acquire device calibration data, track vibration levels, and trend data.
Key to the system design, according to Craig Corzine, CSE's system integrator, is the ability to customize WEB, something that he believes other operator interface programs don't provide to the same degree. Customizing features include animating graphics displays for piping schematics, customizing alarms for each I/O point, and creating alarm messages specific to Gaylord's policies and procedures. The WEB software allowed Gaylord to use an off-the-shelf Pentium 200 processor with a Windows NT operating system; eliminating the need for specialized computer hardware should eliminate upgrading or supplier problems in the future.
