Distribution grid modernisation project.

Salt River Project (SRP), the largest electricity provider in the greater Phoenix area, (AZ USA), has selected Emerson’s OSI digital grid solutions to reliably manage its distribution power grid, optimise operations and incorporate a growing supply of distributed energy resources. Emerson’s technologies and smart grid platform will coordinate the utility’s distribution operations that provide power to more than one million customers in central Arizona.

This project is part of SRP’s multiyear plan to address next-generation grid challenges, including managing sustainable and fast-expanding distributed energy resources such as solar panels, wind turbines and cogeneration plants, as well as handling bidirectional power flow and allowing more intermittent sources of power into the system. Emerson’s OSI Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS), built on the monarch™ operational technology platform, enables utilities to improve system reliability, efficiency and safety by managing, analysing and optimising the entire distribution network.

“Our ADMS project with Emerson is a foundational part of our distribution enablement plan,” said Chris Campbell, senior director of distribution and telecom operations at SRP. “It will provide us with an enhanced technology platform to optimise grid asset utilisation and implement advanced grid operations.”

Emerson’s OSI digital grid technologies offer an expandable and adaptable platform that enables a reliable, efficient electricity distribution network that is flexible to real-time needs.

“Emerson, through its OSI digital grid solutions business, has been a proud partner of SRP for many years, providing our energy management system technology for transmission grid management,” said Al Eliasen, president of Emerson’s OSI digital grid solutions business. “This project expands our expertise to the distribution grid, providing a uniform, scalable and secure platform throughout SRP’s generation, transmission and distribution assets.”

As market demand grows for renewable energy sources, Emerson strengthened its capabilities through the October 2020 acquisition of Open Systems International, Inc. (OSI Inc.). Emerson’s domain expertise in power generation, combined with OSI Inc.’s complementary software and reach within the power transmission and distribution sectors, enables companies to monitor, control and optimise operations in real-time across the power enterprise.

• See also: Acquisition expands commitment to advanced software! (27/8/2020)

@EMR_Automation @Emerson_News @OSI_USA @SRPconnect @HHC_Lewis #PAuto #Power  #USA 

Communicating with power grids.

A new family of Industrial IoT gateways for Smart Grid applications has been launched by HMS Industrial Networks. The Anybus SG-gateways enable communication between industrial applications and energy protocols. This communication is the very basis for the so called “Smart Grid” where power plants and energy equipment are interacting with industrial applications. The SG-gateways are yet another example of how HMS realizes the Industrial Internet of Things.

The new SG-gateways enable communication between industrial devices running Modbus, PROFIBUS, PROFINET, EtherNet/IP, or M-Bus and energy protocols (IEC61850 and IEC60870-5-104). This means that a power plant control room which is using the IEC protocols, can connect to industrial devices such as generators, drives, filters and protection equipment.

Since these gateways can act both as a master and slave, it is also possible to connect Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) which communicate over IEC-standards, to industrial networks, allowing them to be controlled by PLCs from e.g. Siemens, Rockwell or Mitsubishi.

The Anybus SG-gateways can also be used to enable remote control and management of electrical equipment in power grids. Data is sent over Ethernet or the 3G cellular network using the telecontrol protocols, after which the data can be presented by a software application in the power plant control room.

Different versions – same configuration
The Anybus SG-gateways are available in different versions for handling various industrial networks and communication standards. These include I/O, Modbus, PROFIBUS, PROFINET, EtherNet/IP, or M-Bus. All versions use the same web-based configuration tool where commands are dragged and dropped, allowing for a quick and easy installation. No additional engineering tools are needed, only a standard browser.

“The Anybus SG-gateways are very powerful tools for handling the conversion between energy and industry standards," says Niklas Selander, Product Manager at HMS Industrial Networks. “The Smart Grid can offer substantial energy savings and optimizations and there is a great demand in the market to create smarter energy solutions. But to make the Smart Grid come true, you need communication between the complex IEC protocols and the industrial world. Our new SG-gateways solve that problem. We already have a number of big industrial customers using the solution.”

Three phase utility grid simulator.

Intepro Systems has introduced the PAS-F Series of programmable three phase utility grid simulators. The PAS-F system combines utility grid simulation and regenerative bi-directional AC source that is capable of both sourcing and sinking the full current load from the device under test (DUT). With power levels ranging from 45kVA to 1.6MVA, the series is capable of testing the largest of dispersed energy inverters.

PAS-F 3 Phase Utility Grid Simulator

When testing dispersed energy products, such as PV inverters, energy storage systems and wind turbines, the traditional test set up requires a load bank in parallel with the DUT and AC source. The PAS-F system does not require the parallel load. Instead, full DUT current is sunk into the AC source and 92% of the power is regenerated back to the utility grid, saving energy and reducing system-cooling requirements.

The PAS-F system offers fully adjustable output voltages (up to 305 V line-to neutral, 528 V line-to-line) and frequency (40-70 Hz). It features embedded low-voltage-ride-through (LVRT) test windows to allow for simple programming of compliance routines, including the new 10% LVRT requirements. The DSP-based controller allows for independent phase angle, voltage and phase imbalance control to meet requirements, such as IEEE1547, where multi-phase inverters must be tested on an individual basis and all phases simultaneously. The PAS-F system can also be used as a reference AC source for use in UL1741, IEEE1547, BDEW (Germany) and CEI0-16 (Italy) compliance testing.