Title: A review on advanced protection, automation, control functions and future control for thermal power plant

Authors: Alok Kole

Addresses: Department of Electrical Engineering, RCC Institute of Information Technology, Kolkata, W.B. Pin-700015, India

Abstract: This paper reviews the historical background, present state, future challenges and opportunities of state-of-the-art power system protection, control and automation systems for thermal power plant. It presents latest high-performance, high-capacity process controller-based total plant automation system including standard control hardware and software to run the power plant reliably and efficiently with low emissions. It also focuses on the latest ABB make S+ Control HPC800 and ALSTHOM make ALSPA P320 power plant flexible automation system, distributed control architecture, high performance PROFIBUS and HART communication protocol and tolerance to data rushes during transients. Today's all subsystems of large thermal power plants can be controlled from central control room through state-of-the-art automation. In the future, it will be possible to modify or extend electrical systems without replacing the entire substation automation system. This paper reviews various aspects of the implementation of the standard in power plants and shows how devices integrate into distributed control system environment.

Keywords: thermal power plants; power system protection; communication protocols; total plant automation; PROFIBUS; IEC 61850; DCS; real time control; supervisory control; flexible automation; distributed control; fault tolerance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAAC.2014.064161

International Journal of Automation and Control, 2014 Vol.8 No.3, pp.211 - 241

Received: 31 Oct 2013
Accepted: 29 Mar 2014
Published online: 28 Aug 2014 *

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