Salzburg AG selected ABB to upgrade the gas turbine control system at its HKW Mitte plant that will improve productivity and enhance asset lifecycle and reliability. Salzburg AG für Energie, Verkehr und Telekommunikation is an energy and infrastructure service provider in Salzburg and upper Austria. “Turbines sit at the heart of a power plant and ABB's gas turbines control systems have been supporting power plants and helping utilities provide electricity to households across the world,” said Martin Zlatanski, project manager at ABB Energy Industries in Switzerland.
Collaboration is key
In September 2021, ABB won the contract to upgrade the existing Advant Master based Egatrol 8 gas turbine control system to the new 800xA based Egatrol X turbine control system. “ABB teams in Austria and Switzerland teamed up to support the customer along this journey, listening carefully to understand its requirements. We collaborated closely from the design phase until and including commissioning. The result is a successfully executed the project, a new Egatrol X turbine control system based on ABB’s Ability System 800xA distributed control system, and a satisfied customer,” Zlatanski added. The Site Acceptance Test (SAT) was completed in August 2023, followed by a successful trial run closed by the end of November, along with Provisional Acceptance.
Customer benefits
The ABB teams designed and upgraded the plant’s gas turbine control system within another planned shutdown. The software engineering team of ABB Switzerland used an in-house code translation process, a virtual gas turbine model, and a system simulator to achieve a fast and virtually error-free software translation and validation. The hardware design, which features ABB’s new I/O evolution kit to evolve the Advant S600 rack I/O to new modular 800xA S800 I/O, allows for significant reduction in commissioning effort and elimination of the risk of re-wiring errors. “Thanks to the IO evolution kit and the modular hardware design, ABB Austria was able to install the new Egatrol X in less than half the anticipated time.
The control system was commissioned within the planned C-inspection of the gas turbine, therefore avoiding extra downtime,” said Thomas Höher, head of Hardware Engineering at ABB Energy Industries in Austria. ABB’s combined efforts, deep process expertise, and domain knowledge ensured fast and smooth upgrade to ABB’s Egatrol X gas turbine control system. In addition, our plant is now equipped with the latest version of ABB’s Distributed Control System 800xA,” said Sebastian Schuller, head of Thermal Generation & District Heating, Salzburg AG.
“This project will strengthen our relationship with Salzburg AG and we will continue to support them with solutions and services that digitalize, automate and electrify industry, to ensure safer, smarter and more sustainable use of our planet’s resources,” concluded Richard Winkler, project manager at ABB Austria.