AUTOMATIC GENERATION CONTROL

Development of AGC for hydro machine is first of its kind in the country.

 The AGC program utilises ACE computed by SLDC SCADA system. An application program is developed in DCS for interface and control part of AGC. It consists of a communication handling part and HMI for Station Operator for information view and Enable/Disable control. lt handles ramping rate and   implements safeguards.

           The  machine selected for AGC is Kakkayam No.6 (50MW) .Normal operating range is 25MW to 50MW.A dedicated optical fibre channel is established between  LD centre and Kakkayam station.

            The machine is of BHEL make with a Distributed Control System(DCS).The DCS supports Modbus-TCP  protocol. Hence an agc server program is developed with Ubuntu Server as OS. Server is interfaced with SLDC SCADA for ACE and SLDC SEM meters for interchange data. At present AGC program utilises ACE computed by SLDC SCADA system. An application program is developed in DCS for interface and control part of AGC. It consists of a communication handling part and HMI for Station Operator for information view and Enable/Disable control. It handles ramping rate and implements safeguards. DCS programs accept SETPOINT and Enable signal from AGC Server and provides generation ,current setpoint and operation status as feedback to Server program.

         AGC server provides a HMI for LD operators to Enable/Disable and Auto /Manual  operations. It also displays relevant parameters and real time operation status  and feedbacks from Station DCS.

        We have achieved manual and automatic operation .Scaled ACE operation in which machine caters a part of ACE is under testing. Setpoint rate depends on machine ramping and settling time which requires 30 seconds.