February 2008

News > Latest news > Drax Power Station awards OLVMS contract to Capula and Beran Instruments

Drax Power Station awards OLVMS contract to Capula and Beran Instruments Ltd

Capula Ltd, and Beran Instruments were selected by Drax Power Limited to supply Online Condition and Vibration Monitoring Systems (OLVMS) to its power station in Selby, North Yorkshire. Drax is the largest single electricity generator in the UK with a capacity of some 4,000MW, the Beran systems will be installed on all 6 generating units at the station.

Work on the project commenced in April 2007 and was completed in December 2008, with Capula the UK's leading advanced automation and real-time business intelligence provider to the power generation, nuclear, utilities and industrial markets acting as the main contractor. The project involves the installation of 6 Beran unitized 766 Online Condition and Vibration Monitoring Systems, to monitor the six steam turbine generator sets that are on site at Drax. Beran has supplied the specialist product with Capula project managing the installation of all 6 systems, making the necessary modifications to the existing Distributed Control System (DCS) and the Advanced Plant Management System (APMS) Supervisory Control Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems and handling subsequent testing and commissioning.

Commenting on the project Beran's Sales and Marketing Manager, Mark Shufflebotham said, “We are delighted to be working with Capula on this project at Drax Power Station. For this project each one of our Beran systems has been configured to monitor 60 vibration channels, 16 hard wired processed channels, 2 phase markers as well as data transferred from the station's Distributed Control System through an OPC interface. The systems have been installed to allow both onsite and remote personnel to access and view plant information, in real-time or analyze historic and real-time data using standard PCs connected via TCP/IP Ethernet links.”

Capula's Power Generation Business Develop Manager, Phil Willett said, “ This project is one of several major control system upgrades being carried out by Capula at Drax power station. This particular one is the first time that Capula has integrated Beran OLVMS equipment to provide on line plant condition monitoring of all 6 turbines at Drax. This system is fully integrated into the DCS process control platform. The new installation replaces obsolete systems and provides them with modern equipment using sophisticated technology for monitoring of turbine vibration during all operating conditions. This allows Drax Power to carefully monitor the condition of the turbines, and schedule routine maintenance and detect problems at an early stage".

Both Capula and Beran Instruments worked closely together during the design and testing phases to ensure a smooth installation. This allowed the OLVMS systems on six units to be installed ahead of schedule.

Peter Muff, Project Manager at Drax commented, “This work is part of a major upgrade to our control systems and through the ability to analyse over 200 operational parameters we have the potential to benefit from avoided revenue loss, increased plant life, improved safety and technical fitness for purpose assurance. Online analysis enables on the spot operational decisions to be made with confidence – a real plus in our business.”