Dust Hopper Streamlining at Innogy’s Aberthaw Power Station
This Autumn, PACSCOM won an order for supplying and commissioning a PACSNET 300T radio telemetry system to allow vehicle drivers to operate dust hopper loading from their vehicle cabs. This system effectively provides a cableless link between operator and a control unit operating over a short distance in the Hopper bays.
Equipment
Each cab contains the control panel and a separate radio controller with helical antenna under the seat. The unit is powered from a 12 v dc regulated supply in the vehicle. The receiver is located in the equipment room above the hopper loading bay, adjacent to a control PLC. The PLC controls the Hopper and provides status signals back to all cab panels LED’s – indicating the status ‘Auto or Run’ for each of the three Hoppers. These LED’s will also show fault conditions by various sequences driven by the PLC.
Driver/Operator Actions
When the vehicle is positioned in the appropriate bay, the operator will first check at this stage that the Comms LED is lit indicating good comms, he will then select Enable on the panel with a latching push button. A feedback LED will light to indicate that the vehicle panel is enabled which allows Stop or Start push buttons to become active.
When pressed momentarily, Stop or Start signals are then transferred to the receiver where they appear as sustained outputs to the PLC. For each Hopper, any of the six vehicle panel start/stop push button inputs will transfer to only one respective digital output for the PLC. Pressing the Stop button will unlatch the Start output at the Receiver.
Unlatching the Enable push button will release the sustained output signals for both Start and Stop to the PLC. The enable indication will also go out at the panel.
Comms Fail During Loading Operations
The Comms will only be good in the vicinity of the hopper as both vehicles and receiver use low gain (helical antennas ).
If any vehicle is undertaking a loading operation (Enable Pressed and Start activated) and it goes into RF comms Fail, the receiver will send a Stop signal and unlatch the Start signal to the PLC, for that particular Hopper. The vehicle panel will indicate a comms Fail. When the RF comms alarm clears the panel will become operational again and the operator will need to resend the start signal. If the comms alarm does not clear and the vehicle is removed from the hopper, the reset input must be pulsed to clear the Stop signal for that hopper before another vehicle can use it.
