The South Korean company KOGAS produces and supplies natural gas and purifies and sells gas-related by-products. To keep their operations running smoothly, the company identified the need to extend the existing product life time and implement the latest communication technology - to benefit from the advanced functions available through the IEC 61850 protocol. IEC 61850 is an international standard for substation automation, which has had significant impact on how modern electric power systems are designed, built and managed.
To minimize the overall process downtime, the customer was looking for a smooth and cost-efficient way to update to the latest IEC 61850-based communication solution. The performance of the current protection system was satisfactory, so the customer wished to keep the already installed RE500 series protection relays.
To meet these requirements, ABB recommended a solution built on the modification and upgrade service available for the RE500 series protection relays. Using the already installed protection relays minimized the shutdown time to perform the upgrade project, as no new wiring or modification of the switchgear panels was needed.
To ensure the continued use of the protection relays, ABB delivered almost 300 new central processing units (CPU) and human-machine interface (HMI) upgrades. ABB also carried out engineering services for the configurations and implementation on site. With the replacement of the hardware the lifespan of the protection relays was prolonged and the customer gained assured availability of ABB's life cycle services.
As a result of this project, the customer has a harmonized installed base, which enables the customer to optimize their spare parts inventory. Further, it also leads to reduced engineering effort, as it is convenient for the maintenance and operations personnel to continue using the same protection relay type and a similar configuration and setting structure.
