From 2009, Nortica Systems is involved on the projects development to improve the national power grid. Currently we are working with other private and public companies to implement the Automatic Generation Control (AGC), which allows power plants to be controlled remotely. Here some of our projects developed in this area:
Automatic Secondary Frequency Control (Local mode). Developed with Wartsila Dominicana and LAESA LTD, this system is the very first frequency control system for small and medium power grids.
This system is adjusting the power of more than one generator with a minimum participation of the operator, then, many power plants can work together during frequency events. This system does not need communication between power plant as other systems do.
After 3 months of developing and testing, on May of 2014, LAESA LTD became the first power plant to implement this platform in the national grid as a pilot project, resulting in millions of savings just in few months of operation.
Events response. This development allows the power plant to operate in controlled loading/unloading load rates during the normal frequency changes of the grid but automatically switching to an aggressive load rate only when an important event in the frequency is detected.
This system decreases the maintenance costs of a power plant related to frequency control and increase operational safety, because, instead of keeping an aggressive ramp or manual operation mode all the time, the system will automatically switch from normal to “fast” mode only when needed during an event, which is usually just few seconds.