B&R Water supply control solution
Successful FAT for Medupi Raw Water Tie-in
During November 2013, ALSTOM PAC South Africa successfully completed the Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) on the autonomous controller for the temporary raw water tie-in point situated 5 km away from the Medupi power plant site (Fig. 1). The raw water tie-in facility is a critical part of the activities associated with firing of the first unit.
In addition to the main project, Eskom awarded the raw water tie-in automation contract to PAC in 2013. Due to the tight subproject schedule derived from the overall project acceleration, the X20 hardware platform using POWERLINK™ fieldbus from Bernecker & Rainer™ (which is used already for Medupi and Kusile turbine controllers Controsteam), was selected. The Wireless link to DCS has been implemented using RadioLinx equipment from ProSoftTM
Fig.1 Raw water tie-in location
Due to the remote location and time constraints, it has been further decided to use for the first time a software platform ‘Automation Studio’ and to
implement full localization of the cubicle manufacturing and assembling.The latter task has been implemented by a local partner of PAC – the South African company KlareTech, which extended the Automation Studio contents by two additional tailored-made MACRO modules, a type of test which has already been successfully implemented in August 2013 with the participation of an ESKOM team.
Controller architecture is shown on the Fig. 2. to the right. HMI
is based on modern touch screen technology. ESKOM will for
the time be using the frequency band 2,4 GHz – which will be
used for wireless communication to the DCS in the Power
Station service building (SSB).
Electronic equipment is accommodated in the stand-alone
cubicle to be installed in the raw water tie-in substation and
two wall mounted enclosures for wireless transmitter and
receiver (first – in the tie-in substation and second one – to be
installed on the Auxiliary Water Cooling Tower in the vicinity of
SSB).
Application software configuration and cubicle documentation
were developed by KlareTech under PAC South Africa technical
supervision and project management. PAC South Africa also
developed the basic engineering (functional logic, HMI
faceplates, and bumpless mode switch-over algorithm for
regulating valves). As a result of the close cooperation between
subproject stakeholders, the important milestone of factory
acceptance testing based on IEC 62381 methodologies has been
achieved.
Another first is that the electronic cubicle manufacturing, application engineering and FAT have been fully localized, demonstrating the potential and ability of PAC together with local partner KlareTech to implement Plant Integration projects.
