Background

Serving more than 36,000 homes and businesses, Wilson Energy operates the fourth-largest city-owned electric system in North Carolina. The municipal utility maintains more than 1,400 miles of power lines and provides electric service to customers throughout Wilson, Wilson County and portions of six surrounding counties.

With a long history of municipal electric service, Wilson Energy operates its system with a focus on reliable and affordable power for its community. Its load management and control operations include the use of generation resources to help manage system demand.

As part of its peak-shaving program, Wilson Energy needed a reliable way to integrate its peaking generators with its QEI SCADA system.

Challenges

Integrating Multiple Generator Controllers with SCADA

Wilson Energy operates peaking generators as part of its load-management and peak-shaving program. The utility uses generators from Caterpillar, Cummins and Volvo, each equipped with generator controllers that provide operating data and control functions.

To incorporate these generators into its QEI SCADA environment, Wilson Energy needed a communication solution capable of:

• Obtaining data from the EZGen generator controller
• Monitoring the generator circuit-breaker status
• Providing SCADA start/stop control
• Monitoring generator battery voltage
• Monitoring additional digital status points
• Monitoring additional analog values at selected locations
• Communicating this information to the existing QEI SCADA system

The challenge wasn’t simply connecting a generator to SCADA. Wilson Energy needed a practical interface that could bring together the required generator data and controls while fitting into its existing SCADA architecture.

Solutions

QEI’s smallest and robust automation controller MicroPAQ-940P is selected as the communication interface between the generator controllers and Wilson Energy’s QEI SCADA system. The MicroPAQ-940P collects generator operating information, breaker status and battery data while providing the required start/stop control from SCADA.

Conclusion

MicroPAQ-940P gave Wilson Energy a straightforward way to integrate its peaking generators with its existing QEI SCADA system. Wilson has experienced success with the MicroPAQ-940P due its simplicity to implement and its ease to configure.

QEI MicroPAQ-940P provides a flexible communication interface for connecting field devices and equipment to QEI SCADA. Explore MicroPAQ →