Emerson Process Management, headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, has announced it has been selected by NTPC Ltd to modernise obsolete controls at the Tanda thermal power station, a 4x110 mw plant located in Ambedkar Nagar in Uttar Pradesh, a company statement revealed. Emerson is installing its Ovation expert control system at all four units of the coal-fired power plant as part of a comprehensive renovation and maintenance project. Emerson's local India Engineering Centre is designing, engineering and supervising the project.
A noteworthy challenge for the control system aspect of the project was the timeframe required for Unit 3 - the first unit slated for modernisation. Emerson received the contract for Unit 3 after the previous vendor was unable to meet the original schedule. The control system installation and unit commissioning needed to take place during a 90-day scheduled outage, which began in the last week of March 2008. A mere three months after contract award, Emerson was able to complete the project during a specified 70-day window within the outage.
At all four Tanda units, the Ovation system will monitor and control the burner management system (BMS) and furnace safeguard supervisory system (FSSS). The Ovation system, designed to meet the specific challenges of the power generation industry, will also interface to the existing Bhel boiler and turbine controls. In all, the Ovation system will manage 10,000 I/O points (2,500 points per unit). The contract also calls for Emerson to supply a total of 40 Ovation redundant controllers (10 per unit) and 36 workstations (nine per unit).
Emerson Process Management, an Emerson business, helps businesses automate their production, processing and distribution in the power, water and wastewater treatment, metals and mining, chemical, oil and gas, refining, pulp and paper, food and beverage, pharmaceutical, and other industries. The Pittsburgh-based company develops plant-wide process control solutions for the power generation, water treatment and wastewater industries.