Abstracts - VGB PowerTech Journal 8/2006

Power Plant Renewal in a Liberalised Market

Johannes Lambertz

With increasing electricity demand and an outdated power plant portfolio in Europe, the forthcoming renewal of the power plant park is one of the major challenges of current times. The requirements to be met by power plant engineering play an important role in the future investment decisions. Power plant operators have to make their decisions in the market environment and face their responsibility: new power plants on the basis of fossil fuels with a total capacity of some 18 000 MW have been announced to be constructed until 2011 in Germany. A joint future task of the electricity industry is the broadening of know-how and the advancement of junior engineers.

Eskoms's Approach to Standardisation of the Process Control Strategies and Philosophies within its Power Plants

John Viljoen

Eskom must adopt new strategies and philosophies, in line with the new technologies to optimise the success of these projects. Specially in the control and instrumentation field there have been extensive changes over the years, and the potential now exists to introduce many new products. This must however be co-ordinated to ensure that consistent approaches are used for aspects such as operator interfaces, maintenance strategies, system configurations, conformance to standards etc. In order to address these co-ordination issues, certain methodologies are being developed by Eskom to manage them from a more centralised viewpoint. One major approach is to develop a standardised philosophy to many of the issues such as having common purchase contracts for all sites for instrumentation, developing Eskom's own standards for topics like HMIs, plant protection systems, plant information systems, training simulators etc.

Energy Supply of the Future - Risks and Chances -

Harald Weber

Two problem areas are making the energy supply of the future - especially the electrical energy supply - a challenge: The first is the restricted availability of the fossil primary energies like gas, oil and coal and the second is the production of CO2 by combustion of these fuels resulting in the so-called Green House Effect with the rise of earth temperature. The coal hereby has the longest availability - serious estimations result in nearly 1200 years duration - but the oil and gas capacities are restricted and will come to an end in the next generation. Because of the fact that electrical energy supply worldwide is mainly based on coal, especially here efforts are necessary to reduce CO2 production. Only this strategy helps to be able to use coal for a long lasting period. For the long period duration these measures will not be sufficient to supply a then ten billiard population of the world appropriate with electrical energy. Here the nuclear fusion technology will become necessary which will be applicable industrially in 2040 as experts expect.

Industrial IT System 800xA - The Control System for the Next Generation of Power Plants

Harald Bruns, Stefan Lauxtermann

The system 800xA developed by ABB is a power plant control system that is capable of combining the latest technologies in this field with best-practice solutions and integrating the I&C equipment already installed in a plant. System 800xA offers plant owners a future-oriented integration platform for process control and sub-station control systems on the basis of the new IEC 61850 standard. Through optimised integration and networking of information in combination with direct and context-sensitive information access, decision-taking processes and the analysis of disturbances are speeded up considerably. Consistent data structures, ranging from field data to plant management data, and a simplified system configuration can reliably lower the system operating costs and increase operational reliability for a long time. This consistent technology can integrate turbine automation, unit automation, and all sorts of control functions and thus creates single-source automation solutions that are highly harmonised and easy to handle.

A Different Approach to the Modernisation of Steam Turbine Control Systems

Sam Blaser, Heinz Vogler

Steam turbines for industrial applications are characterised by their reliability and long maintenance intervals. In order to successfully implement an integrated turbine control system, it is necessary to take a holistic approach. The key requirement for successful implementation of a turbine control system upgrade is to have rotating machine experts with extensive operating and maintenance experience involved from the outset to evaluate the project and define the scope of work accurately with the assistance of control and instrumentation engineers and also to ensure timely and trouble-free start-up of the unit after completion of the upgrade.

Sustainable further Socio-economic Evolution of the Globalised Society

Erich Welfonder

Based on the consideration of the advancing technical/economic development the origins of this eigendynamic are pointed out. Also the intermeshed couplings to the other eigendynamics - the increasing consumption of resources and the environmental pollution as well as the populations' development - are regarded. The consisting interdisciplinary relations are explained by means of analytical considerations, statistical time series as well as by corresponding simulation studies. Therein the repercussion of automation on the society proves to be of special importance. Building-up on these facts required countermeasures concerning a sustainable further evolution of the globalised society are derived. Within essential points, these measures do agree to the targets of the Global Marshall plan Initiative. (Lecture at "VGB KELI Conference 2006 - Electrical Engineering, Instrumentation and Control, Information Technology in Power Plant").

Operation Experiences with the Biomass Heat-and-power Plant Landesbergen

Wolfgang Domas, Matthias Eiden

After the year 2000, German waste wood-fired power plants received a boost following the displacement of the Act on Feeding Electricity into the Grid by the Act on Renewables. Since that point in time utilities have also been entitled to get funds for biomass-based electricity and the plant size entitled to receive funds was increased from 5 to 20 MW. Besides, waste wood was finally classified as biomass according to the Ordinance on Biomass. E.ON Kraftwerke AG and Stadtwerke Hannover AG jointly erected the Landesbergen biomass-fired co-generation plant that was commissioned in 2003. The paper will report on the experience made in the two first years of operation and the occurring problems related to boiler, fuel feeding and ash conveyance from the grate as well as the remedial measures taken.

Concepts and Examples for Life Time Extension of Systems in Power Plants

Robert Kauer, Hans Christian Schröder

Optimum operational planning comprises measures aiming at the continuous maintenance (at possibly equal and/or lower cost) to increase the availability of technical systems. With suitable maintenance measures the original availability and quality features are kept up and/or are adjusted to current demands. Especially in the case of systems the lifetime of which is nearly terminating, measures have to be taken that enable a predictive and cost-efficient planning.

Practical Experience and Knowledge from Carrying out Corrosion Protection Work in Flue Gas Plants Transporting High-temperature Humid Plumes or Sulphurous Gases

Manfred Guy

Corrosion occurred in the chimney pipe of the Steglitz power plant. The pipe was lined by thermal coating because the realisation period was much shorter and in comparison to special steel approximately € 1.5 million could be saved. Additionally only minor damage occurred after 10 years of operation. The flue gas duct in unit D of the Reuter West plant was lined by Oldodur coating. Due to wrong operation the by-pass duct was repeatedly loaded by 160 °C and considerably damaged.
An optimum high-quality coating is influenced by the quality assurance procedure in the forefield as well as during the course of work, i.e. depending on the situation sensible and feasible and technically grounded decisions have to be taken.

Investigations of Corrosion Protective Layers in Energy Plants

Peter Crimmann, Dietmar Bendix, Jörg Metschke, Martin Faulstich

So-called corrosion or material probes are used to analyse coatings in short-term tests under real conditions. The resistance against high-temperature corrosion of thermally sprayed coatings of waste-to-energy plants was tested. A combination of metal/ceramics turned out to be a suitable composite material.

Investigation of the Insulation Material of an Aged Generator Step-up Transformer - Comparison with Results of Dissolved Gas Analysis (DGA) and Furanic Components in Oil

Thomas Leibfried, Christian Homagk, Dietmar Giselbrecht, Manfred Stach

Today, the generator transformers in these power stations have reached an age of 30 years and above. Due to a number of reasons, the power stations available today must be operated during the next years. This leads to the question when is it technically and economically reasonable to exchange a generator transformer, especially if the remaining operating time is limited. Investigations of insulation material taken from a generator transformer presented in this paper show that this generator transformer has reached the end of its lifetime according to the state-of-the-art in transformer engineering. Results of the dissolved gas analysis (DGA) and analysis of the furanic compounds in the oil are also discussed in this paper.