Norbert PennerManaging Director

Hydro Power Plant Automation

Use Case: Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant

Right Bank Municipality: Nanuque – Minas Gerais;

Left Bank Municipality: Serra dos Aimorés – MG, Mucuri – Bahia;

Installed Capacity: 60 MW (3 turbines); River: Mucuri;

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Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant

Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant

Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant

Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant

Existing Automation System Industrial PLC network; New SOE boards are not available anymore,

only refurbished boards can be found at high costs;

Maintenance costs becoming too high;

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Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant

How to upgrade?

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Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant

Automation Upgrade Project: Decisions made Additon of a new PLC automation network,

adding redundancy to the system; Modifications on the existing PLCs software, to

accomplish redundancy; The new PLC network should be based on state-of-

the-art PLCs for the energy market.

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PLCs from Netcontrol Single platform with all-in-one functionality; Both RTU and PLC functionality; IEC 61131-3; Modular; SOE with 1ms timestamp resolution; Software was written from scratch based on the

legacy’s PLCs software

Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant

Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant

Gateways developed by Itech The gateways combine the PLC networks in a

single one, with full redundancy; NoSQL database is used, for maximum

throughput; Linux operating system; Profinet, IEC 104 and Modbus communication

protocols;

Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant

PLCs Netcon 500

Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant• Resulting Architecture

Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant

PLCs distribution One PLC pair (legacy + Netcontrol) for each

generator (UG1, UG2 and UG3) One PLC pair for the substation (SUC) One PLC pair for the flooding gates control (VUC) One PLC pair for the power supply system (AC +

DC + diesel generator)

Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant

PLC programming All 5 programming languages, IEC 61131-3;

Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant