EMPLOYER: General Engineering and Construction [More Info]

PROJECT: An interstate power generation/control/monitor/logging system. (Load Flow Control)

Project Description: A Load Flow Control system for maintaining the flow and billing of electric power to individual cities based on demand in real time. The city of Lafayette, Louisiana owned two power plants with considerable excess capacity. When the decision was made to use this excess to generate power to sell to nearby cities, General Engineering was awarded the contract.

The system consisted of:

• One Remote Terminal unit (RTU) in each client city, which tracked all power consumed from the local electric company lines. The data was sent by telemetry to the CTU.
• A Central Terminal Unit (CTU) located in the City of Lafayette's main generating plant. The CTU received real time usage data from each RTU and directly adjusted the power generated to match the demand.
• A telemetry system connecting each client city with the main generating plant. The system carried data generated by the RTU to the CTU.

Operation:

Each RTU continuously reported to the CTU the amount of power needed to supply its client city. The CTU merged all the data into a control signal that directly controlled the generators and guaranteed that the proper amount of power was fed into the local electric company lines to exactly offset the amount used by all the client cities combined. The CTU also tracked usage by city and produced reports, which were used to bill each client city monthly and to pay the local electric company for the use of its lines.

My contributions to the project were:

• Design of the RTU Hardware using an embedded TMS9900 microprocessor.
• All Software used in the RTU (written in assembly language).
• Design of the CTU Hardware using an embedded TMS9900 microprocessor.
• All Software used in the CTU (written in a real time version of Pascal).
• The algorithm used to control the generators.
• The communications protocol used to convey data from the RTU to the CTU.
• Supervision of the system installation.
• Technical support after installation.

Accomplishments:

• The system was completed on time and under budget.
• The system performed so well that a consortium of cities was formed to expand and take the system statewide.