Power Station Protection Design

Energy-from-waste incineration plants are becomingly increasingly essential in the UK for both residential waste management and renewable power generation. Consequently, plant issues can lead not only to loss of export, but also diversion of waste to landfill. We investigated a protection maloperation at one such facility, which had resulted in a site blackout. Our engineer provided a root-cause analysis report, electrical fault level and coordination studies, and helped to recommission the steam turbine generator.

Project Description

We were asked to investigate a G59 protection maloperation at the 40MVA Energy Recovery Facility in Ardley, Oxfordshire.  Our engineer visited the site to survey the protection devices on the 33kV, 11kV and low-voltage systems.  Our root-cause analysis report led to an upgrade of the site G59 protection, following the UK’s Accelerated Loss of Mains scheme, which has improved the site’s resilience to electrical faults.

We continued to provide design consultancy services to our client, including full fault level, protection coordination and arc flash studies.  Our engineer installed and tested all recommended protection changes from these studies.  In this way, we were able to take full ownership of the design and implementation of a new site-wide protection scheme.

In addition, we supported the site during recommissioning of the steam turbine generator.  Our scope included insulation tests on the generator, testing the associated instrument transformers and proving the cable interface.  We also took responsibility for dynamic commissioning of the generator protection, excitation and synchronising systems.

Project Gallery

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