WELCOME TO SESSION ON

CLOSED LOOP
CONTROL SYSTEMS
–An OVWER VIEW
By
PUJAR RAMESH
EX GM NTPC

Thursday, September 15, 1

2022
 AGENDA
 Power Plant complexity & need
for control system
 Evolution of control Strategy
 Changed Power sector scenario &
Burden on Control System
 Integrated control of Boiler & Turbine
 Boiler Follow /Turbine Follow/Run Back
/CMC
 DCS – Architecture
 Fossil fueled power plant
(FFPP)

Chemical energy
stored in the
Refers to a group fossil fuel such as
of coal, gas, oil
power generation into
convert the
devices that Thermal energy,
Mechanical energy
and finally
Electrical energy

Thursday, September 15, 3

2022
 EVOLUTION

Through a century’s
technological developments,
Initial plants
typically power plants have now
operated at
low temperature been evolved into
and pressure
Conditions a highly complex system that
(150∘C, 0.9 Mpa)
and could can operate at supercritical
only generate
conditions of 28.5 Mpa and 600∘C,
30 kw electricity
generating 1300 MW of electricity
with much higher efficiency.
Thursday, September 15, 4
2022
 EVOLUTION

Although there are many variations in power plant

configuration and design, the basic working principle
of the FFPPs keeps the same:

 Fossil fuel is combusted,

 Generating high pressure and temperature steam,
 Which is then expanded to rotate a turbine,
 And drives the generator to produce electricity

Thursday, September 15, 5

2022
 The main task of the control system

Electrical Power
POWER PLANT output

Boiler , Turbine, Generator

To meet the
demand of
the grid
Maintaining the main thermal
dynamical variables
such as
superheater/reheater steam temperature,
throttle pressure, furnace pressure,
drum
Thursday, Septemberwater
15, level, etc within limits. 6
2022
Need of the CONTROL SYSTEM

The steam
Well-designed
power plants,
are complex, control system is required
multivariable, in the plants to ensure the
and
correct operation
interactive
processes, of the entire process

Thursday, September 15, 7

2022
 Need of the Hour
Rapidly following the grid load demand
and controlling relevant process variables
such as:
 Throttle pressure,
 Superheater/reheater steam temperature,
 Furnace pressure,
 Drum water level (subcritical plant), etc.,
So that high efficiency, durability and safety can
be attained in the plant. 8
 Real Challenge

However, the PI/ PID

Therefore, it is still very
control systems,
which are based on a difficult for
the classical CCS
loops, to achieve a
cannot fully account satisfactory control
for the interactions performance in
variables in the nonlinear both power output
multi-input multi-output and throttle pressure.
(MIMO) power plant
 The requirement for making
coal fired stations intelligent

 Wide scale penetration of renewable energy (solar photovoltaic

and wind) into the grid which results in rapid response cycling of the
thermal plants.

 Ramping up or down of thermal plants hitherto was through

manual load setting or through the free governor mode of operation.

 With the entrance of rapidly varying renewable generation, the

need arises for automatic load setting on the thermal plants through
intelligent features to respond to variations in renewable generation.

Thursday, September 15, 10

2022
 The requirement for making
coal fired stations intelligent
 Manual load setting or free governor mode has limitations of
response time.

 Also the ramping rate is also to be automatically set.

 When the load on the thermal plants goes below its technical
minimum load, coal cannot be fired into the plant because of flame
separation

 But fuel oil has to be fired to maintain the load. The other issue
with cycling plants is that the plant machinery especially of the
power block are designed for a specific number of cyclic operations.

11
 Design Life

The power plant assets

(boiler, turbine, generators, major auxiliaries, etc.)
are designed for an
operational life of 3,00,000 (3 lakh) operating hours
or
around 35 years of service
under normal operating regime.

Thursday, September 15, 12

2022
 Operational Life

Both the
physical
The factors
which affect
running hours
the operational as well as
life are cyclic (on/off)
operations

Thursday, September 15, 13

2022
 Design life

The allowable starts of base load units are

 10 hot starts/year,
 5 warm starts/year
 And 3 cold starts/year.

Each on/off or start/stop operation

can be taken as an
expenditure of 20 h of steady operational life
 Design Life

Typical (normal) number of starts in

the life of a unit over 200 MW unit
are as
 5000 hot starts,
 1000 warm starts and
 500 cold starts.
 The design step load change is +
15% /min and the ramping rate
is + 5%/min.
Thursday, September 15, 15
2022
 Design Life

The plants are designed for

continuous operation at
near full load with annual
PLF of around 80 %

Thursday, September 15, 16

2022
 Under high renewable injection

The thermal plant loading will have to be ramped

up and down resulting in
 Cycling transient operations
 With low load factors.
When the rate of cycling goes up,
 The plant component life will be reduced
 Due to degradation mechanisms of
 Fatigue and creep rupture initiation.

Thursday, September 15, 17

2022
 Boiler-Turbine Coordinated
Control System
 Current plant or unit control strategies allow generation of the
grid load demand while maintaining the balance among the
process variables within the unit.

 Mainly, they match the boiler steam flow energy output to the
energy required by the turbine-generator to match the unit load
demand at all times.

 The coordinated control system (CCS) constitutes the upper-

most layer of the control system,

 And it is responsible for driving the boiler-turbine-

generator set as a single entity, harmonizing the slow response
of the boiler with the faster response of the turbine, to achieve
fast and stable unit response during load tracking maneuvers
and load disturbances.

Thursday, September 15, 18

2022
 Boiler-Turbine Coordinated
Control System
For the FFPP, power output and throttle pressure are the
two most important variables.
 Externally, the power output reflects a balance
between the plant’s power generation and grid’s power
demand;

 Internally, the throttle pressure naturally represents

a balance between the boiler’s energy supply and
turbine’s energy need.

 The dominant behavior of the unit is governed

through the power and pressure control loops.

Thursday, September 15, 19

2022
Boiler-Turbine Coordinated Control System

 Therefore, the central task of the CCS is to regulate

the power output to meet the demand of the grid while
maintaining the throttle pressure within a given
tolerance.

 Evolved from multiple single-input single-output

control loop (decentralized) configurations based on
PID control algorithms, currently, there are two possible
modes for coordinated control:

 coordinated boiler-following (BF) mode and

coordinated turbine-following (TF) mode.

20
Thursday, September 15, PMI Revision 00 21
2022
 BOILER FOLLOW MODE
Historically, boiler following schemes were the
first to be used.
 The boiler awaits the actions of the turbine to match the requested
generation.

 The turbine control valves regulate the steam flow into the turbine
in terms of the power demand.

 Then, the boiler controls respond to the changes in steam flow and
pressure.

 The advantage of this approach is a fast response to load changes,

nevertheless,

Thursday, September 15, 22

2022
 BOILER FOLLOW MODE
Historically, boiler following schemes were the
first to be used.
 It should be noted that such rapid response is basically achieved
by using the stored thermal energy in the plant, thus it is effective only
for a small demand change.

 The disadvantage of the coordinated BF mode is that, in its pure

form, this approach shows a less stable throttle pressure control
since the boiler has a tendency to overshoot because it requires some time
to match the turbine.

Thursday, September 15, 23

2022
 Turbine following Mode

Began around the late 1960s and early 1970s.

 The turbine follows the actions of the boiler to match the
requested generation.

 The power demand is used by the combustion control at the

boiler to adjust the fuel and air into the furnace to modify the
steam production.

 Then the turbine controls respond by adjusting the throttle

valve openings to keep the pressure at the setpoint value.

 The advantage of this approach is its very stable response to

load changes with minimal steam pressure fluctuations.

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 Turbine following Mode

Began around the late 1960s and early 1970s.

 The main disadvantage is that this approach does not make use
of the energy storage capability of the boiler, thus producing a
rather slow response.

 For this reason, it is mainly used for a large base-load plant or

a gas-fired plant, which has a relatively quick response
compared to the coal plant

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 Coordinated Mode
It is worth mentioning that, to improve the
performance of the CCS in both BF and TF
modes,
 The power demand is fed both to the
boiler system (BF) and turbine system
(TF)
 The large inertial behavior of boiler
can be partly compensated (in BF) and
the turbine’s ability to respond quickly
can be utilized (inTF).
 This coordinated control scheme is now
widely used in practice.
 Real Challenge

For this reason, various advanced modeling

and
multivariable control technologies
are studied, aiming
to realize a real coordinated control
of boiler-turbine.
.
Control Hierarchy

4
Control Hierarchy
Control Hierarchy
 CO ORDINATED
MASTER CONTROL
-
CMC