The Oak Creek Power Plant is one of the most efficient in the Midwest and, therefore, must operate with high uptime. During a harsh winter, coal supplies became unreliable, and the plant nearly ran out of fuel. We Energies determined this disruption was unacceptable and constructed a new coal pile. Environmental concerns required the new coal pile to need a state-of-the-art dust suppression system. Kapur was contracted to design this system. The design included a water pumping station to provide water to the dust suppression equipment, eight large spray nozzles to water down the coal pile, and six Dust Boss fogging systems to capture coal dust that might become airborne.
The power system for the equipment included getting 4160 VAC power from a nearby substation and converting the power via an outdoor transformer to a usable 480VAC power source. That 480 VAC power was routed to a state-of-the-art Motor Control Center (MCC). The MCC has the latest arc flash protection for personnel safety. The MCC has advanced power monitoring, providing information on energy use, voltage fluctuations, power quality, and waveform analysis, all accessible via an Ethernet interface. Also included are state-of-the-art digital connections capable of controlling the Variable Frequency drive pumps and fused disconnect switches to provide power to auxiliary equipment.
The control system was designed to be compatible with the plant’s ControlLogix and ControlNet platforms using fiber optic cable to transmit control messages, converters to get those messages on the ControlNet Coax Media, and ControlNet bridges to control the 1756 I/O modules. The system included a PanelView visualization system at the I/O cabinet to accept operator input at the pump house. It was integrated into the plant control system for operator input at multiple stations. The control system included a weather station to measure wind speed and direction that will alert operators to possible high dust situations and algorithms to change the operation of the spray nozzles and Dust Boss systems to maximize the dust suppression efforts.
