anbm said:
(cutAre there any generator persons out there??? I am confused myself. (-: anbm
Good start. You have defined some of criteria you need. This is the begining of your design document. I'd recomend you finish your design document before starting the design.
All of your decisions are going to be:
Money versus Critical life-safety
Money vs needed loads
Money vs convenience
I can't help with this. You and your customer have to make these decisions
Okay, from the information we have so far, the scenerio is:
1. Utility failure
2. Running life-safety critical loads and other needed loads on generator power
3. Generators on-line meet minimum spinning reserve and very little more.
4. Start large motor loads with out dropping life-safety critical loads. Other needed loads may be temporarily shed.
Yes you can do this with a PLC. Starting large motor loads with minimal spinning reserve is non trivial. The starting motor is a huge inductive load, the power factor will drop, causing the voltage to sag. The sudden increase in power will cause the frequency to drop. Since you are running with low spinning reserve, the drivers (engines) are already near WOT. You have nowhere to go except to start dumping non-essential load, and you have maybe a second to do it. Sheding on frequency droop when the gensets are near WOT is tough to calibrate. If the loadshed frequency is to close, you get a lot of nuisance trips. Too far and the gens are too low to recover and trip. There are some pretty good protective relays that will watch the frequency, and rate of change. One of those can be programmed to initiate multi-stage load shed. You will have to accept the occasional nuisance trip. Your PLC will have to perform the watchdog functions for reset and re-load
Consider having your PLC look at each of the motors/loads that can cause you trouble. When a load gets a command to start, the PLC holds it out until the appropriate loads are shed or additional gens are put on-line.
Give this some thought. I have to go to work for a bit.
cf