Mining Industry Application

Hugo E. Castro, B.S., PE ETAP Automation - USA ETAP Real-Time Power Management System

Introduction

Large industrial facilities such as metals and mining require sophisticated technology to extract and manage their products. In a perfect world a reliable and high quality supply of power would be available to guarantee successful operation, profitability, safety, and environmental preservation. Often this is not the case and electrical systems are subjected to disturbances of various magnitudes and various locations. These disturbances either cause minor interruption in the production process with production cost going up $100,000 per incident or they may linger long enough to cause a more severe outage that has a substantial impact on revenue in the tune of millions of dollars per incident. Managers understand this correlation between an unpredictable electrical system and its impact on profitability. When system stability is challenged due to a disturbance, all critical loads should be preserved and intelligent load shedding systems have to be implemented that have the same understanding of the electrical network as the engineer who designed and analyzed them. This article describes the success of one mining company, PT Newmont Nusa Tenggara (PTNNT) an Indonesian joint venture company. Batu Hijau is an open pit mine where (PTNNT) is proactively managing 120 MW of system load using an ETAP Power Management Solution with Intelligent Load Shedding (ILS). This cyclic load is carried by four 30 MW steam generators and nine 5.1 MW diesel generators. All connected at a voltage of 11kV. The process loads are fed from the power plant through two (2) 110 kV, 16-kilometer transmission lines. The power is then stepped down to 11kV and 33 kV for distribution. Figure 1. Simplified PT Newmont Diagram
Summary of power generation\transmission\distribution components: Feeders: 180+ Shunt Compensation: 8 Transformers: 130+ Generators: 13

Open Pit mine in Indonesia 120 MW of Steam Turbine Generation

110 kV Transmission System

33 kV and 11kV Power Distribution System

For over five years, PTNNT has been utilizing a suite of energy management tools that offers the mining industry a fully integrated power management solution. Through continuous monitoring, simulation, and optimization, ETAP Real-Time provides PTNNT complete visibility of their electrical network with protection against steady state and transient disturbances. In addition to

functions such as Advanced Monitoring and Load Trending, ETAP ILS provides optimal load shedding for demand side management and response, mechanical disturbances such as boiler trips, and electrical disturbances such as faults. ETAP ILS provides them faster execution of load shedding, as compared to conventional systems thus further reducing the load relief requirements in this mining company.
Power Management System Objectives The objectives for the Power Management System where as follows:
All key objectives were met. The most significant key objectives were the reduction of spinning reserve and the elimination of unnecessary load shedding which has decreased our diesel consumption and increased process uptime.

Real Time Monitoring of the system loads Optimize load preservation Eliminate unnecessary load shedding Reduction of spinning reserve requirements Reliable load preservation system Fast response to electrical & mechanical disturbances Operator alerts for marginal operating conditions Offline test and validation of load shedding response System trending and disturbances reporting analysis

PTNNT selected the following ETAP Applications to achieve the outlined objectives: Power System Monitoring and Simulation PSMS Intelligent Load Shedding ILS Playback Historian - ETPB Results:

All key objectives were met. The most significant key objectives were the reduction of
spinning reserve and the elimination of unnecessary load shedding which has decreased our diesel consumption and increased process uptime. Indicated Ilyas Yamin, Power Plant Superintendent at PT Newmont Nusatenggara.
Figure 2. Typical ILS Monitor screen and trigger

Ilyas Yamin Power Plant Superintendent PT Newmont Nusatenggara

The following trends provided by PT Newmont demonstrate the results from the Intelligent Load Shedding (ILS) function. The following trend shows the system response to a steam unit trip (approximately 25% generation loss) without the ILS function active:
One Steam Unit Trip W/O ILS
120 110 52 100 90 80 51 50 70 53

25% of load saved during a steam turbine generator trip

MW

51 MW 52 MW 53 MW

Hz

60 50

49 48

40 30 20 46 10 0 45 47

54 MW DG6 MW Total MW Freq

10:02:37

10:02:41

10:02:45

10:02:49

10:02:53

10:02:57

10:03:01

10:03:05

10:03:09

10:03:13

10:03:17

10:03:21

10:03:25

10:03:29

10:03:33

10:03:37

10:03:41

10:03:45

10:03:49

10:03:53

10:03:57

10:04:01

10 Aug 06

Figure 3. System response to 25% Gen lost without ILS

We can see about 50% of load is lost during the event. The next trend shows the system response with the ILS function active:
Faster Frequency Recovery
MW
One Steam Unit Trip With ILS
140 50.5 50.4 120 50.3 50.2 50.1 80 50 49.9 49.8 40 49.7 51 MW 49.6 20 49.5 0 49.4 52 MW 53 MW 54 MW Total Generation Freq

100

10:04:05

60

19:50:04

19:50:06

19:50:08

19:50:10

19:50:12

19:50:14

19:50:16

19:50:18

19:50:20

19:50:22

19:50:24

19:50:26

19:50:28

19:50:30

19:50:32

19:50:34

19:50:36

19:50:38

19:50:40

19:50:42

19:50:44

19:50:46

19:50:48

19:50:50

19:50:52

Generation units are maintain in full operation after disturbance

19 Aug 07

Figure 4. System response to 25% Gen lost with ILS

From this trend we can see that the ILS successfully prevents 25% of additional load to be shed. Since the ILS system repose if fast and the correct amount of load is shed, the frequency recovers rapidly and the other 3 generation units are maintain in full operation. Conclusion: ETAP Power Management System has proven to be a great benefit to PT Newmont for operations of the system. When system stability is challenged due to a disturbance, all critical loads are preserved and the intelligent load shedding system is now preventing production losses that could have cost PTNNT in the range of $50,000 to $100,000 per hour. The system has been in operation since 2005. For more details on this project please contact Mr. Ilyas Yamin at Ilyas.Yamin@nnt.co.id or Hugo Castro at hugo.castro@etap.com.

19:50:54

Hz