Yokogawa Australia has been awarded a contract to build a simulator for Liddell Power Station, in the Upper Hunter Valley of NSW.
The simulator will enable the power station to train operators in all aspects of the plant’s operation, replicate and investigate plant failures and test proposed plant modifications prior to implementation. It is expected to take 18 months to build.
“The most important feature of the simulator will be that it runs exactly the same software package as the real plant system — a CENTUM distributed control system installed by Yokogawa some years ago — and uses exactly the same configuration,” said Yokogawa simulation group manager, Richard Porter.
“This makes the simulator the perfect test and training environment for the control system. To the eyes of the operator, the control system appears to be totally identical to the real plant with operations and alarm events requiring identical attention, making it a very useful training tool. Operators can be trained in every aspect of the plant’s operation, even those that only occur infrequently.”
According to Yokogawa, another benefit of utilising a simulator is that it will provide a realistic representation of the power plant. This will allow modifications to the control system to be not only tested on the simulator, but also commissioned on the simulator. This can reduce commissioning and implementation costs quite dramatically, says Yokogawa.