POWER January 2012 - 14

PJM Completes Unique
Dual-Primary Control
Centers
Swift technology developments in the
power sector and increasingly sophisticated
security threats have prompted
regional transmission organization PJM
Interconnection to switch from its aging
centrally dispatched legacy system to
two " state-of-the-art " primary control
centers as part of its $200 million Advanced
Control Center (AC2) program.
The grid operator that serves parts of
the Eastern Interconnection and administers
a $35 billion wholesale electricity
market said in November, when the switchover
was completed, that the program
was developed through more than
five years of design, development, and
testing. It was initiated in 2006 with
Siemens Power Transmission & Distribution
to define and develop a secure architecture
and open messaging platform
for modern, large-scale energy management
and market management systems.
Primary reasons PJM opted to sail
ahead with the initiative were to reduce
total cost of ownership by technology
standardization and to upgrade its systems
to new standards for security and
resiliency because PJM's membership
had more than doubled since its legacy
systems were installed. Another reason
was that the grid entity realized " innovations
beyond marginal improvements
in existing control systems " would be
necessary to maintain power reliability,
it said.
Essentially, the AC2 program reduces
risk because " the two fully staffed primary
control centers better ensure uninterrupted
operation of markets and
grid control if functionality were lost at
5. Two ways about it. PJM completed a
$200 million program that essentially replaces
an aging centrally dispatched legacy system
with two state-of-the-art primary control centers.
Courtesy: PJM
either center, " PJM said (Figure 5). The
scalable, service-oriented architecture
(SOA) for large energy management/
market management systems promotes
interoperability that " cannot be found
in proprietary, legacy systems, " it said.
The SOA-based system provides a common
approach for software applications
and computer-based infrastructure to
exchange data and information. It also
allows technology from other vendors to
communicate and interoperate without
special adaptation.
PJM said it is the only grid operator
in the U.S.-and only one of three
worldwide, including the British Columbia
Transmission Corp. and Transpower in New
Zealand-to have or have considered dual
primary control centers. " The uniqueness
of this PJM implementation is found in
two elements-the scale across the business
enterprise and, most importantly, its
use in 'real-time' monitoring and control
systems. While SOA has a proven history in
other industries as the backbone of transaction-based
software applications, to our
knowledge, this is the first demonstrated
deployment for real-time electric and market
systems, " PJM spokesperson Paula
DuPont-Kidd told POWER in November.
Fran Barret, director of the AC2 program,
explained that this approach is
an enterprise solution with a strategic
technological direction: management
of data and smart grid integration. The
program has enabled PJM to deploy and
demonstrate the approach across its Energy
Management & Market Management
Systems and its " Innovation " platform.
PJM's customer-facing applications are
expected to follow this direction as part
of natural enhancement and replacement
programs.
POWER Digest
South Korea, China Poised to Make
Colossal Investments in Wind Power.
South Korea, a nation that recently
announced it would spend 1 trillion
won ($884 million) on feed-in tariffs
for wind and solar projects, on Nov. 10
said it planned to invest 10.2 trillion
won ($9 billion) in a 2.5-GW offshore
wind farm that could come online by
2019. The government-led project will
be led by Korea Electric Power Corp.,
which will procure turbines from eight
local suppliers, the Ministry of Knowledge
Economy said. The project could
be located off the southwest coast of
the Korean peninsula in Jeollabukdo
and Jeollanamdo provinces. It will in14
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clude
construction of 100-MW and 400MW
demonstration farms by 2014 and
2016 respectively, where eight Korean
suppliers-including Doosan Heavy Industries
and Construction Co., Daewoo
Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering
Co., and Hyundai Heavy Industries-
will test 3-MW to 7-MW turbines.
Also in November, China's National
Development Reform Energy Research
Institute published its 2050 wind power
plan, a report that predicts total
installed wind capacity in the country
will hit 400 GW by 2030 and 1,000 GW
by 2050. China intends to back its wind
industry with investments of up to $12
trillion yuan ($1.8 trillion) to supply
17% of domestic demand with wind by
2050. China, which offers a fixed pricing
mechanism for wind power and offers
subsidies, has already become the
world's biggest wind power market. It
installed nearly 19 GW of new capacity
in 2010, bringing total capacity to
44.7 GW.
GE, MetCap to Build New Gas
Plant, Extend Novel Integrated Renewables
Gas Project. GE and Turkish
energy company MetCap Energy
Investments on Nov. 18 announced
their investment in the 878-MW Eurostar
project, a gas-fired plant that will help,
starting in 2014, to power Istanbul,
supporting Turkey's efforts to modernize
its aging energy infrastructure and meet
its growing electricity requirements.
MetCap also announced approval
from the Turkish government to nearly
double the output of what it calls the
world's first integrated renewables combined-cycle
(IRCC) plant by 2016. The
initial phase of the Dervish IRCC plant
in Karaman, Turkey, was announced in
June and is based on GE's breakthrough
FlexEfficiency 50 combined cycle technology
(see our Dec. 2011 feature story
on this turbine). The license extension
allows energy output to be increased
from 570 MW to 1,080 MW. GE's FlexEfficiency
IRCC plant includes a nextgeneration
50-hertz 9FB gas turbine, a
steam turbine, a generator, 22 MW of
GE wind turbines, and 50 MW of eSolar
concentrated solar thermal tower technology.
The Dervish license extension
also paves the way for a second plant
using GE's FlexEfficiency technology
and eSolar's concentrated solar power
technologies.
UK Opens Largest CCS Pilot. The
UK formally opened its largest carbon
capture and storage (CCS) project on
Nov. 30 at the Ferrybridge Power Station
POWER | January 2012
http://www.powermag.com
POWER January 2012

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