Power Plants Get Data to Central Agency via Ignition

Due to the annual increase in energy demand, Ecuador’s Electricity Sector needs to improve its processes and optimize resources for energy generation. The Control Center of Energy (CENACE) is responsible for coordinating the power system’s operations in terms of security, quality and economy. As a result, CENACE requires information from all plants of energy generation for coordination, monitoring and real-time control of the National Interconnected System.

To fulfill the purpose of transmitting information to CENACE, the Electric SCADA Project For the Thermal Power Plant of Manta was developed. The project consists of two thermal power plants, Manta II (12 units of 2 MW each) and TG1-Miraflores (1 unit of 15 MW) located in the city of Manta on Ecuador’s coast. The unit’s information, such as power, voltages, state of circuits, breakers, disconnectors, electrical and mechanical alarms and trips are grouped in Remote Terminal Units (RTUs). The data is monitored and stored in the database by the Ignition SCADA system and sent through the optical fiber net to CENACE, which is in the city of Quito, by DNP3 Ethernet Protocol.

An additional advantage of this project is the use of the Ignition Web Browser Module. With it, operators can monitor, operate, configure and catch oscillography reports of IEDs ABB in the control room without leaving the environment of Ignition SCADA, in order to get a full integration. The project also allows monitoring energy data on mobile devices with the Ignition Mobile Module, which helps operators, maintenance staff and engineers in their daily work. In the future we will implement alarm notifications via SMS text message.