Project Summary: The Digital Substation faces a growing need to replace existing protective relaying systems and upgrade some of the existing tile-protection schemes. The current electromechanical and solid-state relays are subject to drifting of the settings and require periodic calibration and maintenance every 2 or 4 years, respectively. By comparison, the new microprocessor relays' current requirement is six-year cycles, possibly decreasing to 12 years cycles with the new PRC-005-2 standard.
The Digital Substation is being upgraded with new breakers, a new control house, and a modern, IEC 61850 integrated Substation Automation and Protection (iSAP) system. Saranac will be the first implementation of our client's Digital Substation concept. It will prove the Digital Substation architecture, its performance, and operational capabilities and become the standard design for future new substations and substation upgrade projects.
K&A Scope: K&A has joined the Digital Station project team to provide project and technical support and guidance based on our experience with implementing an IEC 61850 large high voltage substation. K&A has generated conceptual designs for the overall substation network architecture and the relay protection schemes. K&A has also participated and supported work in the Protection and Control P&C lab in testing some of the relay devices and configurations that are being considered for use in this project.
In addition to our technical support role as Subject Matter Expert, K&A is providing project management support by: creating an initial draft of EPC specifications as well as a project scoping and project plan documents; developing a preliminary project plan and Work Breakdown Structure (WBS); developing an overall project schedule; coordinating participation by various client groups in the development of the EPC specifications; gathering requirements from multiple project stakeholders; attending project meetings; publishing meeting minutes; tracking action items, and tracking overall progress.
