201802_Renewable Energy

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Plant InformationLocation: The Republic of Karelia, Russian FederationCapacity: 2 x 12.5 MWCompletion: 2015Pal’eozersk Hydro Power PlantYokogawa DCS controls TGC-1’s major hydro power plantExecutive SummaryThe Republic of Karelia is located in the northwest of the Russian Federation and has many hydro power plants making use of the abundant water resources. The Pal’eozersk hydro power plant was built in 1954 close to the Sun River which flows through Girvas city, with two 12.5 MW units. This is a cascade type of hydro power plant which uses the difference in height of the Sun River.The owner of the plant, Territorial Generating Company number 1 (TGC-1, also referred to as TGK-1 [Territorial'naya Generiruyushchaya Kompaniya No. 1]), is a regional power generation company affiliated with Gazprom, the biggest gas company in Russia.TGC-1 owns power plants in the northwest of Russia and 40% of its capacity comes from hydro power plants, with a total capacity of 3,000 MW.Due to the aging of existing equipment which had been in use for more than 50 years, TGC-1 decided to modernize the equipment and replace the aging control, monitoring, and protection systems with Yokogawa’s latest CENTUM VP distributed control system and ProSafe-RS safety-instrumented system engineered by Forus, the local agent of Yokogawa.The Challenges and the SolutionsAs this area is far from the center of the city, load control is required for island operation in case of a grid shutdown due to a natural disaster, which was difficult to achieve with existing old and awkward hydraulic servo drives for turbine wicket control.To solve this problem, the existing drives were replaced with redundant motor-driven cylinders and new precise controls. This realized stable load control at less than 3 MW power generation and enabled island operation in case of a natural disaster, which used to cause frequent shutdowns. There has been no problem or shutdown since the plant started operation in December 2015 following the replacement by Forus.Replacement of drives for turbine wicket controlReplacement with redundant motor-driven electric actuators has brought the following advantages over conventional hydraulic servo drives:•Eliminated environmental hazards•Higher reliability and long-term stability of turbine control in normal and emergency situations•Minimized maintenance and routine manual work, maximized service intervalHydro turbine unit 2World Heritage Kizhi Island7Success Story CollectionRenewable EnergyHydro