MELANCTHON WIND PLANT CONTROL HOUSE

Canadian Hydro Developers Inc. is a leading company in Canada’s Green Power industry, owning the large Melancthon Wind Plant with 133 wind turbines generating 199MW in Dufferin County, Ontario.  Canadian Hydro split the project into two phases, with the Melancthon I Wind Plant having 45 wind turbines generating 67MW, and Melancthon II having 88 turbines generating 132MW.  The construction of Melancthon I started in June 2005 and went into service in March 2006, the first Renewable Energy Supply (RES) project to reach commercial operation in Ontario.  Construction of Melancthon II started in the spring of 2008, and will be in service by November 2008.

Melancthon I collects the power from the turbines via three 34.5kV feeders connected to a busbar, which in turn is connected via a 100MVA step-up transformer to the Hydro One (HONI) 230kV transmission network.  There is also a 15MVAr capacitor bank connected to the 34.5kV busbar to provide additional reactive power to be fed into the transmission network.  In June 2005 Virelec was awarded the contract to supply the protection and control system housed in a “drop-in” shelter, a critical portion of the project to connect the wind plant to the transmission network.

GE protection IEDs were selected as main 1 devices for the 34.5kV feeders, the capacitor bank, the grounding transformer, the step-up transformer and the 230kV transmission connection, while SEL devices were selected for the main 2 transformer and transmission line protection.  The ABB NSD570 teleprotection device was selected for inter-tripping, and the GE D20 RTU was required for remote access to the system.  All the devices were housed in six panels, for which Virelec did the detailed engineering, assembly, wiring and testing of the system.  Additional equipment housed in the 26 x 12ft shelter was the battery system and charger, AC and DC distribution panels and switches, revenue meters, the wind farm management panel and miscellaneous equipment.  Virelec completed the factory acceptance test (FAT) at our facility before delivering the shelter to the site, also assisting with installation and commissioning.  This enabled Canadian Hydro to put Melancthon I into service after a short nine-month construction period.

In October 2007 Canadian Hydro proceeded with the construction of the Melancthon II Wind Plant, again awarding Virelec a contract to provide the protection and control system.  The interconnection of Melancthon II to the second HONI 230kV transmission line is very similar to Melancthon I.  However, there were significant changes required to accommodate the additional protection and control equipment; firstly, to extend the shelter to use common equipment such as the battery and the telecom isolation panel; secondly, to separate the A and B protection systems for the whole plant rather than having them separated on a “chronological” basis, and; thirdly, to upgrade the HMI system and improve Canadian Hydro’s remote access to monitor the system from Alberta.  Further, it was critical that integrating the two protection and control systems on the site had to be implemented quickly, to minimize the time that Melancthon I was out of service.

Virelec met these demanding requirements, including upgrading the communication architecture from a serial to an Ethernet system, and upgrading the HMI system to Enervista with Viewnodes, implementing the remote viewpoint monitoring feature.  The shelter was extended by 23ft, and the A and B protection systems were separated and re-commissioned on site in July 2008.

Jim Pinter from Canadian Hydro, who managed the Melancthon I and II projects, was pleased with Virelec’s performance, “I was very impressed that Virelec was able to complete the work in order to get the Phase I station back on-line in such a short time”.

“We are particularly proud of our performance on the Melancthon Wind Plant project”, said Paul Marot, President of Virelec, “and we’re looking forward to working with Canadian Hydro in the future”.

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