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"The most impressive open
automation application in the world!"
SoftPLC selected as Unit Controller
standard for large Hydro-Electric Power Plants
"When you cut through all of the marketing
hype and you get down to real product testing
SoftPLC is clearly the best Programmable Automation
Controller" -USACE Engineer
SoftPLC Corporation's open architecture
controller, SoftPLC was
selected in 1997 by the US Army Corps of Engineers -
Hydroelectric Design Center (USACE-HDC) as the
standard process controller for 12 large hydro power
generating plants. SoftPLC is helping USACE
continue to provide its customers with clean,
low-cost, reliable electric power.
Due to the success of these projects, in 2008
SoftPLC has been selected by the US Bureau of
Reclamation (USBR) for the unit controls upgrade at
the Grand Coulee Dam.
Quick facts about Grand Coulee Dam:
- Largest concrete structure in the USA - 11,975,521 cubic yards (enough to build a four-foot wide, four-inch deep sidewalk twice around the equator)
- 6809 MW - largest electric power producing facility in the USA and 3rd largest producer of electricity in the world
- 4 power plants (Bonneville Dam: 2, Hoover Dam: 1)
- 33 generators (Three Gorges Dam: 32, Bonneville Dam: 21, Hoover Dam: 17)
- Length: 5,223 ft. Spillway width: 1,650 ft.
- Height above bedrock - 550 ft. (taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza; all the pyramids at Giza could fit within its base)
- Hydraulic height - 380 feet (more than twice that of Niagara Falls)
Powerhouse 3 (lower left of the dam), is large enough to hold five football fields end to end.
SoftPLC is being used to automate and control
turbine generator units in some of the largest hydro
generation plants in the United States. There
currently are over 250 SoftPLC controlled turbine
generator units with a total output capacity of 14
GigaWatts (or nearly 17% of all US hydroelectric
capacity)! Over 50,000 I/O points are being
controlled!
Once the Grand Coulee upgrade is fully
implemented (installation starts in 2010), an
additional 6.8 GigaWatts will be SoftPLC controlled.
"I can't remember a time in the last 30
years that a vendor goes to the lengths that SoftPLC
Corp. does to ensure our projects continue to be a
success." -USACE Engineer
To select their controller, the USACE-HDC
conducted extensive product reviews followed by a
lengthy product testing process. All major
proprietary hardware PLC's and open architecture PC
based control products were reviewed and tested. Due
to the mission critical nature of the application,
the process also included stress testing to
determine the robustness and reliability of each
product.
SoftPLC was the only PC based controller that
did not crash during the entire product review,
testing and stress testing period.
"Product selection was based on research and
in house testing, not marketing hype, which resulted
in the 'best in class' products and technology being
selected." -USACE Engineer
SoftPLC was ultimately selected over all other
alternatives because it offered a flexible, open
architecture system for application s today and into
the future. Additionally, SoftPLC was also most
suited for the mission critical nature of turbine
generator control, proven by the testing to be an
extremely reliable product.
 Moreover,
the USACE was interested in taking advantage of
SoftPLC's custom C/C++ & Java instructions,
virtually unlimited data memory and user logic
capacity, extremely fast logic scan time, 100MB
Ethernet TCP/IP interface, Java Servlet enabled web
server, and embedded FTP server.
The turbine generator control project has proven
extremely successful, with the first turbine
generator units under SoftPLC control since 1999.
This success led to hundreds of other applications
for SoftPLC into the hydro plants such as turbine
blade control, fish way and screen automation,
powerhouse mux control, orifice gate control,
annunciators and others.
The USACE-HDC testing process was designed to
pick the "best in class" product(s) from
the products tested, which when installed together
would result in the best open automation solution.
Product review and testing were done not only for
the controller, but also for the I/O, communication
network, and operator interface software.
The "best in class" open automation
system originally selected was SoftPLC Corporation's
SoftPLC® control software, GE Fanuc's iFix™ SCADA
software and MTL's I/O-95™. Due to the
obsolescence of the MTL I/O-95 product line, the
systems are in the process of being retrofitted with
new ModbusTCP ethernet I/O. Not only can the
original SoftPLC controllers continue to be used
with the new I/O, by having 2 ethernet ports per
controller, the I/O network and communication
networks are segmented for optimum performance of
each.
Dan Perrier, president of Automated Control
Systems, Inc. and system integrator on the USACE-HDC
project writes: "SoftPLC was selected as
the controller supplier for a number of reasons. Its
control software is compatible with the
Allen-Bradley PLC instruction set and communication
protocols, it easily and reliably integrates with
other vendor technologies, has virtually unlimited
program and data capacities, and has an extensible
instruction set that allows the user to develop
advanced functionality in C/C++ and Java. Project
personnel used the extensible instructions to
implement advanced control calculations and
communication protocols to a number of other
computing systems."
"We implemented plant wide control functions
including allocation of generating units and
reporting on equipment capacity with a C++ control
engine that utilitized an XML system model to
control how the software worked at each site. The
XML system modeling has been a great design."
"The first control systems installed have
been running since 1999 and have surpassed
expectations for uptime, usability, flexibility and
operational readiness. The operator and technician
acceptance of the system has been tremendous."
 Ethernet
TCP/IP was selected as the best PLC communication
network, implemented over 100MB full duplex switched
fiber optic network. Ethernet at 100MB proved to
easily have the best performance, lowest cost, and
was the most open PLC communications network for
peer to peer networking between the SCADA and
SoftPLC's.
Each turbine generator unit control cell has a
SoftPLC Processor and
approximately 200 points of I/O. Within each hydro
plant there are 3 to 27 turbine generator units
communicating over the 100MB TCP/IP Ethernet
network. Each hydro plant has several iFix view
nodes also connected to the TCP/IP Ethernet network.
These iFix applications have been reported to have
the single largest database and fastest throughput
of any iFix application in the world.
 SoftPLC
Corporation's world class service and support also
played a role in the final selection process,
helping ensure the customer was able to integrate
the multi-vendor components very successfully.
The control systems at the largest of these hydro
generating power plants have been estimated by many
to be the single most impressive open automation
application in the world, removing any doubt that
open automation works for large mission critical
applications.
SoftPLC Corporation President and founder Dick
Hollenbeck says: "Although it's an
increasing trend to do in-house testing, you had to
be impressed with the level of detail in HDC's test
process. As more customers take the time to do
studies of this kind, SoftPLC benefits
disproportionately because our product is rock solid
and customers see this in the tests."
"We are in the unique position of being able
to walk into many of our prospective customer
accounts and calmly inform them that we are already
controlling their plant, indirectly. SoftPLC is
proud to be providing power to approximately 5 out
of every 100 Americans."
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