Santa Clara hydro power plant was operated locally by human operators. After the upgrade designed by Itech, using state-of-the-art Netcontrol PLCs, the power plant is now controlled remotely.

1. Norbert Penner
Managing Director
Hydro Power Plant
Automation

2. Use Case: Santa Clara
Hydroelectric Power Plant
 Right Bank Municipality: Nanuque – Minas
Gerais;
 Left Bank Municipality: Serra dos Aimorés –
MG, Mucuri – Bahia;
 Installed Capacity: 60 MW (3 turbines);
 River: Mucuri;
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3. Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant

4. Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant

5. Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant

6. Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant
 Existing Automation System
 Industrial PLC network;
 New SOE boards are not available anymore,
only refurbished boards can be found at high
costs;
 Maintenance costs becoming too high;
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7. Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant
How to upgrade?

8. 8
Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant
 Automation Upgrade Project: Decisions
made
 Additon of a new PLC automation network,
adding redundancy to the system;
 Modifications on the existing PLCs software, to
accomplish redundancy;
 The new PLC network should be based on state-of-
the-art PLCs for the energy market.

9. 9
 PLCs from Netcontrol
 Single platform with all-in-one functionality;
 Both RTU and PLC functionality;
 IEC 61131-3;
 Modular;
 SOE with 1ms timestamp resolution;
 Software was written from scratch based on the
legacy’s PLCs software
Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant

10. Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant
 Gateways developed by Itech
 The gateways combine the PLC networks in a
single one, with full redundancy;
 NoSQL database is used, for maximum
throughput;
 Linux operating system;
 Profinet, IEC 104 and Modbus communication
protocols;

11. Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant
 PLCs Netcon 500

12. Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant
• Resulting Architecture

13. Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant
 PLCs distribution
 One PLC pair (legacy + Netcontrol) for each
generator (UG1, UG2 and UG3)
 One PLC pair for the substation (SUC)
 One PLC pair for the flooding gates control (VUC)
 One PLC pair for the power supply system (AC +
DC + diesel generator)

14. Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant
 PLC programming
 All 5 programming languages, IEC 61131-3;

15. Santa Clara Hydroelectric Power Plant