Sinclair Knight Merz completed a feasibility study into the technical issues associated with upgrading the Instrumentation and Control Systems at the 1450 MW lignite-fired Yallourn W Power Station in Victoria.
The original control systems at the power station were designed in the 1960s and 1970s, and had been undergoing gradual replacement on a "system-by-system" basis as they aged and failed, as maintenance costs increased, or as greater automation or reliability was required. This approach did not provide the reliability, availability, flexibility, adaptability, fault diagnosis and information access to the same extent as a fully-integrated control system.
The study carried out by Sinclair Knight Merz included the development of a Control System Development Plan that integrated availability, flexibility, process control allocation, operator interface requirements, engineering support and tools, fault diagnosis and documentation of systems, for a 28 000 input/output distributed control system. The study made allowance for future automation and expansion of the control systems and considered the consolidation of three existing control rooms into a single facility.
Particular attention was given to the development of an implementation strategy that minimised significant engineering costs and avoided extending the station’s planned outages.
Cost estimates were prepared for control system hardware, installation and engineering and this data was used in conjunction with Yallourn Energy’s business plan objectives to carry out a return on investment analysis.