George Town Substation automation upgrade
Client: Transend Networks
Location: George Town, Tasmania, Australia
Date: September 2010 – September 2012
Upgrading an existing substation automation system to increase reliability and security of transmission and enable future expansion.
Background
The George Town Substation plays a critical role in ensuring the security and reliability of the Tasmanian transmission system, providing the vital point of connection to the mainland Australian electricity grid via the Basslink interconnector.
The existing substation automation system required upgrading, as primary and secondary assets were due to be upgraded in the near future. The existing SCADA system was unstable and costly to modify and not suitable for future expansion.
Solution
Entura was engaged to upgrade the existing substation automation system to a new distributed system, with redundancy to increase reliability and reduce SCADA downtime. Entura provided concept design, procurement and detailed design through to commissioning and operator/engineers training.
As this upgrade interfaced to a varied age of secondary equipment, Entura drew on its wealth of experience and in-depth knowledge of interfacing SCADA and automation equipment to new and legacy devices to resolve all interfacing/interoperability issues. The new system was designed to incorporate the future upgrade of primary plant and protection and control devices.
Entura designed a distributed substation automation system concept. Once this was approved, a detailed design, along with automation equipment configurations, was created for implementation. The substation automation system was progressively installed by Entura into a live substation in stages, to minimise SCADA downtime.
Outcome
Entura’s experience with greenfield and brownfield automation upgrades, SCADA protocols, best practices and varied equipment interfaces enabled the successful provision of an automation system that could interface to all new and existing equipment without any impact to the operational system. The final system significantly increased its availability, reliability, maintainability and flexibility for future expansion; which enabled seamless system changes once primary and secondary assets were replaced.
