In a deregulated electricity market environment where power plants are managed by different generating companies, outages are very critical and may have a significant economic impact. Hence, reliable operation of key equipment in power plants is of utmost importance.
Protecting equipment in the power plant
Generator circuit-breaker (GCB) plays an important role in protecting key equipment in power plants like generators and power transformers by clearing harmful short-circuits in tens of milliseconds to prevent severe damages.
ABB's GCBs have been protecting power plants for more than six decades, helping to increase safety and reliability for all types of power plants around the globe. As a pioneer and technology leader, ABB is going beyond providing only the equipment.
Every customer is unique
A highly competent team of GCB specialists at ABB under its Application Study group is well-equipped with expert know-how to support customers in the proper selection of GCB during all phases of power plant design.
The Application Study group specializes in the reproduction of the behaviour of power plants to quantify the availability improvement brought by a GCB. Its journey began with a research1 on the availability improvement of thermal power plants by employing a GCB. This research confirmed the many benefits of a GCB, and was subsequently extended to applications in combined cycle power plants. Today, the results of this research have benefitted the power generation industry by providing cost-effective plant layouts with GCB for both gas and steam portions of combined-cycle power plants.
At the recent Annual European Safety and Reliability Conference ESREL, ABB joined forces with Professor Enrico Zio, a well-respected figure in the field of reliability, Director of the Chair on System Science and the Energetic Challenge funded by Fondation Electricite' de France (EDF) at Ecole CentraleSupelec in Paris. Together, a research2 paper that quantifies the increase in throughput of power plants with the utilization of GCB was developed. "Many studies have been done in the past to measure the cost-effectiveness of employing GCB in power plants. This research is the first to quantify the return-on-investment that will help power plant designers and operators to optimize their operations by using innovative layouts," said Professor Enrico Zio, who is also a full professor at the Energy Department of the Politecnico di Milano.
Supporting the Internet of Things, Services and People
The trend of online monitoring for key assets in power plants is increasing and will continue to rise.
ABB is enabling this via its state-of-the-art monitoring system, GMS600, an online monitoring system to enable preventive and predictive maintenance. Innovative gas and temperature monitoring features, together with webserver functionality allows efficient maintenance of GCBs that results in even higher power plant availability as presented at the CIGRE conference3. The webserver functionality allows access from remote to the actual and logged values of GMS600 via Ethernet by any internet browsers.
As part of ABB's Value Based Customer Care concept, this monitoring solution enables our experts to support the power plant operators and maintenance engineers to facilitate the highest operational availability of their GCB through the entire lifecycle.
"The work of the GCB Application Study group in the assessment of availability of power plants highlights ABB's high level of expertise to support customers and consultants in their design of power plant layouts", said Mirko Palazzo, Global Product Manager for GCB. "As a pioneer in the field of reliability studies, we continuously engage in research to push the boundaries of excellence in innovation with strong focus on customer needs".
ABB offers the widest and most modern portfolio of GCBs in SF6 and vacuum technology across a range of short-circuit ratings, from 50 kA to 300 kA and nominal currents from 3'150 A to over 50'000 A to meet the demand of all types of power plants around the globe.
1 Reliability and Economic Analysis of Different Power Station Layouts, 2003, IEEE PowerTech, D. Braun, F. Granata, M. Delfanti, M. Palazzo, and M. Caletti.
2 Sequential Monte Carlo Method to Assess the Availability of Power Station Layouts with Generator Circuit-Breakers, 2015, ESREL, V. Figliuzzi, F. Cadini, E. Zio and M. Palazzo
3 A Novel Monitoring System to Optimize Maintenance Strategies for Generator Circuit-Breakers and Increase the Availability of Power Plants, Romania 2015, CIGRE CMDM, M. Palazzo, A. Antoniadis, P. Fraioli, A. Marmolejo
