A progressive utility company undertook a long term revitalization of a thermal plant in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. The 650 megawatt coal-burning facility used a conventional distributed control system (DCS). As part of the upgrade project, they issued a performance specification for the replacement control system.
Fossil Power Systems, an international player in the field of power generation, responded to the request for proposal by offering an innovative alternative. They based their submission on their in-house knowledge of the industry, Trihedral Engineering Limited's VTS TM software for monitoring and control, and third party hardware.
Fossil took VTS as the base interface and fully configured the software to create components designed to meet the specific demands of the client. The resulting middle application layer can be further configured by the end user to the particular requirements of the plant by use of specialized graphics to create its specific look and feel.
The application currently being installed by the utility uses VTS in conjunction with Moore APACS controllers. The application handles roughly 20,000 I/O tags and uses multiple screens, each of which has custom context-sensitive controls. The system provides full control, alarming, operator interface, and data logging.
Under a site license arrangement, approximately thirty workstations run VTS applications and communicate on a LAN/WAN system. Specialized drivers have also been developed in VTS for other hardware devices and some expert systems. They also providing optimization to the new controls system.
Trihedral Engineering Limited has a long and enviable record of involvement in the utilities market. VTS runs as a full 32-bit application on Windows 95 and Windows NT. With 3,000 licenses worldwide, VTS is fully on-line configurable and features extensive built-in control capabilities and superb graphics.
