Oman India Fertilizer Company (OMIFCO) had several issues with unplanned outages, disruptions in the supply of utilities, and problems with their power management control system. Additionally, there were issues with the visualization and control of the company's connection to the grid. These issues had a negative impact on the company's operations and resulted in financial losses.
Location: Sur, Oman
Year: 2018
Challenges
The company was facing several challenges related to their electrical systems and power management. These challenges included:
- Missing Electrical Data and Power System Model
- Lack of proper electrical data and system model
- Lack of system historical events
- Missing electrical data in Distributed Control System (DCS)
- Limited system knowledge by the operator
- Unplanned Outages and Process Interruptions
- Frequent unplanned outages due to improper protective device setting
- Nuisance load shedding triggers caused by power grid frequency fluctuations
- Inadequate frequency relay setting and operation
- Excessive process shutdown during load shedding events
- Improper generator operating mode
- Excessive voltage drop due to un-sequenced motor starting
- Outdated and Faulty SCADA system
- Substation control and HMI failures
- Unable to effectively monitor energy usage
- Manual grid synchronization with GTGs
- No infrastructure for root cause analysis
Solutions
The co-engineering effort between ETAP and OMIFCO provided the plant with an integrated power management solution with a unique model-based approach:
- Creating and validating entire plant’s electrical model
- Performing exhaustive power system analysis
- Finding out shortfalls of entire operations
- Replacing existing BCU’s with latest ones
- Segregating and interfacing all electrical data to ETAP
- Tuning and implementing same model for PMS
- Configuring a user-friendly HMI for easy electrical system operation
- Installation of various interlocks preventing operational and human errors
Optimizing grid synchronization to prevent unnecessary system shutdowns Implemented ETAP Real-Time™ applications:
- Advanced monitoring
- Predictive simulation and what-if analysis
- State and load estimation
- Event playback and root cause analysis
- Intelligent load shedding and validation
- Grid synchronization
- Tabular events and alarm management
- Web-based HMI dashboards
Benefits
The installation and application of ETAP software has proven to be a great benefit to OMIFCO for operations and validation of their plant’s power system. The overall production increase by preventing unnecessary system shutdowns with predictive analysis.
- Reduced process downtime from one hour to 15 minutes
- Increased the operations efficiency by 75%
- Over $41,000 savings per month on synchronization procedures
- ROI after second year of 105.6%
Site Details
Load Characteristics
- Total No. of Substations = 8
- 11 kV Switchgear = 3
- 6.6 kV Switchgear = 18
- 0.48 kV Switchgear = 20
Power Generation
- GT – 1 & 2 (2 X 40.72 MW)
- OETC Grid – 30 MW Import, 6 MW Export
Equipment Details
ETAP Hardware system is composed of:
- Redundant PMS and Stand-Alone Historian Server
- Engineering and Operator Workstation
- BCU & RTU
Protocols supported:
DNP3.0, OPC, IEC 61850, I/O Tags - 10,000
OMIFCO System Architecture
ETAP HMI Sync Checklist
ETAP HMI Screen
3
- Manufacturing
