Electricity and Control December 2024

TRANSFORMERS, SUBSTATIONS + CABLES

© Beckhoff © Siemens Energy

The Beckhoff concept of distributed power measurement minimises the material and installation costs for comprehensive energy data acquisition. As a manufacturer of systems for energy transmission and stabilisation of the power grid, Siemens Energy puts its trust in PC-based control technology from Beckhoff (in this case: a system for high-voltage direct current transmission). © IEH/KIT © Beckhoff Worldwide, more than 100 000 wind turbines up to a size of 16 MW have already been automated with Beckhoff’s PC-based control technology. EtherCAT demonstrates its advantages here, as it enables fast and precisely synchro nisable control processes, allowing for operation and en ergy yield to be optimised. This applies to individual wind turbines, even on a larger scale, and to networking within a complete wind farm. In offshore turbines, high voltage di rect current (HVDC) transmission is one of the most sophis ticated elements in a supply grid. PC-based control from Beckhoff has been successfully implemented in this sector, in solutions developed by Siemens Energy, for example Beckhoff technology demonstrates its advantages in power generation as well as in the distribution of energy via regional supply grids. Does this offer efficiency potential? In addition to the system-integrated measurement tech nology, users benefit from the broad range of Beckhoff I/O solutions for all application areas and environmental condi tions. This means all necessary data can be recorded and merged in the control system – for power measurement,

Operation and monitoring of the grid simulation at the Institute of Electrical Energy Systems and High Voltage Technology (IEH) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) created with TwinCAT HMI.

With the distributed clocks of EtherCAT, only one EL3443 measurement terminal is needed to achieve detailed high-quality power measurements in distributed power measurement, together with any number of EL3446 measurement terminals distributed in the grid. ciently fast and precise to respond appropriately to short term events in the grid. With our concept of distributed power measurement, high-quality measurement data can be generated cost effectively. A key feature here is that all relevant electrical data from the supply grid, including real measured values for power – without local voltage measurement – can be determined with the EL3446 EtherCAT Terminal used only as a current measurement terminal. However, the EL3446 terminals distributed in the system as required receive the voltage values needed for calculating the power data via Ether CAT from a separate EL3443 power measurement termi nal. This needs to be installed only once and is precisely synchronised in time by the distributed clocks function in EtherCAT. Hardware and installation costs are minimised and the technology reliably monitors the grid quality with a high-quality harmonic measurement at each outgoing volt age feed and the resulting power quality factor. Solutions with PC-based control have proven their worth, in the wind energy sector, for example. What are the main advantages? What is behind the concept of distributed power measurement?

DECEMBER 2024 Electricity + Control

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