Instrumentation & Controls

Tuning power plant controls takes nerves of steel and an intimate knowledge of plant systems gained only by experience. Tuning controls also requires equal parts art and science, which probably is why there are so few tuning experts in the power industry. In Part I of a two-part series, we explore a mix of the theoretical and practical aspects of tuning boiler controls.

Which new and emerging technologies will be essential to your power plant’s success? Our special cover story series gives you a glimpse into the future of advanced distributed controls, wireless applications, and automation technologies.

The past decade has seen an explosion of technology that has significantly altered the process control industry. The adoption of commercially available technology driven by desktop computing has allowed suppliers to focus on applications to enhance the process and deliver ever-greater value to the user.

Distributed control systems are powerful assets for new and modernized power plants. Thanks to three product generations of technology innovations, these systems now provide new benefits — including improved O&M efficiency, greater plant design flexibility, and improved process control and asset reliability — that help competitive plants advance in the game.

Over the past decade, power plant control systems have evolved from DCS-centered platforms with proprietary software, to open systems using industry standard hardware and software, and then to totally integrated plant automation systems with almost unlimited connectivity and the ability to interrogate field instruments from many different manufacturers. What’s next?

Wireless technology is a mostly untapped resource in the power generation industry that can have a significant impact on the way business is done. It enables a greater degree of connectivity among devices for enhanced monitoring and asset utilization and has led to the development of new applications that improve productivity, uptime, and overall business performance.

Modern wireless systems improve productivity, monitoring activities, and safety at power plants by enabling the right people to be at the right place at the right time. Wireless technology can put hard-to-access process and asset information at your fingertips, wherever you are, to enable more accurate and timely decisions.

If the rotating equipment and boiler are a plant’s brawn, then a control system that efficiently integrates myriad plant functions is its brains. Luckily, in a power plant, we can perform a brain transplant when the control system becomes unreliable or too costly to maintain. But first, you have to justify that surgery.

In 2005, Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L), a subsidiary of Akron, Ohio – based FirstEnergy Corp., initiated a project to identify protection system improvements that could be made to proactively combat wind- and lightning-related weather events that create sustained power outages (Figure 2). JCP&L determined that these changes had the potential to improve the […]

Entergy christened its Performance Monitoring and Diagnostic Center several years ago to leverage the expertise of its most senior operators and technicians across the company’s entire fleet of plants. The center also makes use of advanced software tools that increase plant availability and reliability by identifying faults before they become major, unplanned outages. The center paid for itself for years to come with a single “big catch” last year.