PLC-Based Stator Water Cooling System for High-Capacity Generators in Power Plant

Abstract

The power station generator will be a high-capacity machine. Because of the enormous current handling capacity, in terms of thousands of amperes—heat generation will be more. The minimum allowable time for a generator running without stator water cooling system (SWCS) is only 17 seconds. In case of any problem in SWCS, it will cause disturbance in power production and results in major revenue loss to the industry. Hence cooling of generators plays a vital role. Failure in cooling arrangement will result in tripping of generator from grid. SWCS using relays are now in practice, but it has to be manually monitored regularly. In order to overcome this problem, we propose PLC for stator cooling. Monitoring SWCS is efficient with programmable logic controller (PLC) as control platform. Control software for SWCS uses ladder programming supports. PLC is ready to render reliable solution through friendly software and will challenge any level of complications. PLC replaces conventional relays/timer-based old control system.

Keywords: de-mineralized water, ladder programming, programmable logic controllers, stator water cooling system, stator windings,