Community electric utility gets advanced boiler controls
By Control Engineering Staff -- Control Engineering, 2/2/2005
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| New cabinet shows boiler controls for Crawfordsville Electric Light & Power. |
Crawfordsville Electric Light & Power recently replaced its distributed control system (DCS) for controlling its boilers with a system from MOST (MTL Open System Technologies) and Advanced Boiler Control Services (ABCS) of Orland Park, IL. Crawfordsville Electric Light & Power (CEL&P) is a community owned utility providing power to the residents, businesses and industries in Crawfordsville, IN. CEL&P has a 111-year history of providing customer-owners with reliable electrical energy.
Boiler capacity is 250,000 lb/hr operating two 21 turbines with 24 MW total power output. In the early 1990s, CEL&P installed a DCS to monitor and control both 125,000 lb boilers and one turbine. DCS replacement was sought due to system maturity, lack of spare parts, increasing operation costs, and greater operator and business demands for operation and performance data.
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| Screen display provides a sense of physical layout as well as process values for CEL&P boiler B. |
CEL&P noted that the advanced boiler control strategies incorporated in MOST’s Matrix Total Control System combined with reduced system installation cost provided maximum flexibility for its operations and for ABCS. “Advanced Boiler Control Services provided a fully redundant control system replacement with Matrix,” said Robert Burrink, ABCS president, “at a very competitive price.” Burrink says Matrix offers superior redundancy, with instantaneous switchover to a backup controller when necessary. Matrix is an open system that readily enables connection to third-party devices over Modbus Ethernet TCP/IP. Matrix seamlessly integrates with Wonderware’s FactorySuite components for Operator Interface and Plant Historian, it automatically incorporates Wonderware’s latest features.
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| New panel and keyboard integrates into existing panel, with familiar indicator lights, gauges, and circle-chart recorders at CEL&P. |
The Matrix system offers a centralized project development environment for control project engineering (process and IEC 61131-3). Matrix is an open, easy-to-use process control engineering and management solution that automatically configures control solutions ranging from straightforward, single loops to advanced control strategies. Matrix’ unique integrated project development environment coordinates all control project engineering for the design, implementation, documentation, and maintenance of a process control system. The Matrix Workbench automatically maintains the project documentation in the as-built state from the initial engineering phases through subsequent system modifications. Project documentation keeps current to the operating control system, eliminating manual documentation updates after system commissioning. CEL&P expects operating savings and lower maintenance costs over the plant’s life with MOST’s Matrix product and Advanced Boiler Control Services control capabilities and project management services.
—edited by Mark T. Hoske, Editor-in-Chief, Control Engineering, mhoske@reedbusiness.com
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