Power Generation

PCS has extensive experience in the area of electrical power generation. We have provided engineering services for fossil and nuclear facilities with units as large as 1000 MW. We have also provided engineering for utility interties of smaller industrial and municipal units, including cogeneration units.

Our expertise covers generator protective relaying, exciters, excitation control systems and governor control systems. We perform studies to evaluate compliance with NERC standards. We also provide field testing services to achieve NERC compliance.

We have provided numerous protective relay upgrades for units ranging in size from 1 MW to 740 MW. Relay upgrade engineering services include relay design, relay settings development, installation, checkout and commissioning.

Our services for the generation industry include engineering studies, project studies, electrical design, protective relay calculations and settings, system automation, field services, and training.

Past Projects

The following describes some of our engineering projects that demonstrate our expertise in the Power Generation field.

• PCS has provided engineering for relay upgrades on 23 generators ranging in size from 129 to 740 MW. Relay protection upgrades include generator step-up transformer protection, unit auxiliary transformer protection, and auxiliary power system protection. The relay upgrades included design, relay settings, checkout and commissioning. Relay design included modifying existing relay one line diagrams, complete development of AC and DC schematics, relay panel layout design, relay panel internal wiring design and field equipment interconnection design. Relay settings included providing required calculations and development of relay settings configuration files. Checkout and commissioning included relay bench testing, field device and wiring checkout, DC function checks, unit startup and load checks.
• Design, install and maintain Power Monitoring System to collect intertie metering data for eight different cities. System reports current energy usage for each city, projects hourly energy consumption and logs historical data reporting and analysis. The monitoring system utilizes GE Fanuc PLC hardware for data collection, GE Cimplicity HMI software for operator interface and digital frame relay circuits for system wide communications.
• Design, install and maintain SCADA System for 13.8kV Municipal Utility Electrical Distribution System. System consists of five 13.8kV distribution substations, municipal power plant with two Gas Turbine Generators, two Steam Turbine Generators and Heat Recovery Boiler. System combined generation is about 55MW. The generator control systems are PLC based using GE Fanuc PLC and I/O hardware. The SCADA System utilizes Wonderware HMI software for operator interface and consists of two redundant desktop computers with four 20” LCD displays each. The electrical system is monitored and controlled via an Ethernet network connecting all substations to a central control room via fiber optic cable. Schweitzer Engineering Labs micro-processor based relays and GE Fanuc PLC hardware are used to provide system status, metering and control. Event reports of electrical system disturbances are automatically collected and logged using Schweitzer Engineering Labs software. Engineering services were provided to upgrade existing Sewer Treatment Plant HMI software to Wonderware.
• Design, install and maintain PLC based control system for Municipal Utility owned 16MW Frame V GE Gas Turbine with Heat Recovery Boiler, Gas Fired Power System Boiler, 12MW Steam Turbine Generator and 5MW Steam Turbine Generator. These control systems consist of GE Fanuc PLC hardware and redundant Wonderware operator workstations with multiple LCD displays. The city’s electrical system, water system and sewer system is monitored and controlled using a combination of fiber optic cable and wireless Ethernet radios for communications. Schweitzer Engineering Labs micro-processor based relays are used for protection and event reporting of the city wide electrical system. All electrical system events are automatically collected and logged for analysis.
• We have provided support and maintenance of microprocessor based G.E. Harris RTU equipment (Remote Terminal Unit) located in fossil fuel power generation plants in South Texas and Louisiana. The RTU units provide data monitoring and control functions.
• PCS has provided coordination studies for this fossil generation plant to analyze and document existing coordination between generator, exciter and transmission protection and control systems. This coordination was done as preparation for conducting MVAR capability field tests required by NERC reliability standards on major generators. These studies include 54 large generators, ranging from 70 MW to 844 MW capacities.