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Valeco Group : Topkapi at the service of Smart Grids
To integrate to the RTE power transport network the production of its wind generator farm in the Lacaune mountains, VALECO Group called upon the CGGroup to supply an evacuation station connected directly to the RTE network in HTB*. The CG Group entrusted the protection and control-command system of the station to SCLE sfe, who chose TOPKAPI: a solution suited to supervising electric stations (source station, etc.).
Valeco Group is an independent producer of renewable power and sells electricity it produces using renewable and non polluting sources (such as the wind or sun) to to EDF. For its farm of 19 wind generators in the Lacaune mountains – total installed power 43.7 MW for this first package, with a planned annual production of 100 GWh corresponding to the annual consumption of 38,700 homes – the Valeco Group acquired an HTB evacuation station (station connected directly to the RTE high voltage network) with CG. The latter entrusted the construction of the protection and control-command system with SCLE sfe.
The choice of the SCADA experience-based
SCLE sfe was introduced to Topkapi by its historical client LYDEC, who uses it in most of its source stations in Casablanca. This experience led to choosing this solution for the electrical station of COUFFRAU.
The supervision PC is installed directly in the station. As there is no permanent operator, it is accessible to the operator remotely using Topkapi's Webserv option, allowing to view the application via a basic web browser; alarms are usually transmitted in real time via Topkapi's standby module.
Supervision of an electric station consists in monitoring the protection and control-command system of the station: a calculator linked with the protection relays and fitted with input/output boards communicates with Topkapi via the IEC 60870.5.10X protocol.
It is a normalized international standard protocol issued for the electricity sector. It allows Topkapi to communicate with any equipment through TCP-IP over Ethernet (60870-5-104 protocol) or a serial link (60870-5-101 protocol) using a RS232 port or a PSTN or GSM modem. It defines messages and values to be sent spontaneously from the slave to the master, after a change ; which means there is no polling procedure. In addition it handles data time-stamped at the source.
Fine chronology and time stamped data at source
It is this latest characteristic which is crucial in this type of application, as information is time-stamped with an accuracy exceeding 10 milliseconds: indeed, occurrence of faults must be discriminated to determine the first which triggered the others. This is called fine chronology.
Like in remote management, Topkapi's source time-stamped data management module allows to integrate this data into logs as if they had been dated by supervision, without specific setting nor development.
Topkapi also provides the main functions required in such applications:
- Remote control of sectioning devices
- Display of network electric magnitudes
- Consigning and displaying time-stamped events
- Consigning states
- Fault analysis
In these times where environmental stakes are crucial, supervision is at the heart of new IT technologies appearing for smart management of power distribution networks, more commonly called "Smart Grids". This achievement confirms that Topkapi solutions are fully suited to the new stakes of network securing, optimizing and management, in order to reduce power consumption.
Focus : SCLE sfe is a company based in Toulouse which designs and integrates systems in the field of energy, ERDF and RTE being its main clients. Its main fields of expertise are: digital control-command, network electrotechnical systems and power electronics applications.
* high voltage network (>50kV)