Main Participants: ZHANG Jie, HAN Changlin, ZHANG Weijun, DENG Xiaogang, WEN Zhengguo, LIU Yin, ZHANG Zimin, ZHU Xueqin, YANG Chunxia, YUAN Pinglu, ZHANG Likang, ZHANG Jianwei, HU Jianing, WANG Huaqiang, GUO Wansen

Most hydropower plants of China are currently using computer monitoring systems whose important components such as servers, PLCs and switches are supplied by foreign manufacturers, which may become procurement or service bottlenecks and can lead to the problem of vital data leakage through backdoor programs. In this context, computer monitoring systems at hydropower plants should be upgraded towards independent manufacturing and improved security in line with the national strategy to break these bottlenecks. This research aims to design a fully homemade computer monitoring platform that can replace all imported equipment in hydropower plants, including servers, operator stations, PLCs and so forth, thus providing a fundamental solution to the abovementioned problems. Developing such a platform in advance will lay a solid foundation for future application to hydropower plants.

·   Studying the structures of hydropower plant monitoring systems according to their characteristics, and proposing the typical structures of computer monitoring systems for small and medium-sized hydropower stations.

·   Exploring the matching between homemade operating systems and homemade servers. CPU chips and operating systems are the foundation of the information industry, which would be unsustainable without secure and controllable CPUs and operating systems; and no computer monitoring systems can run stably without the perfect matching between CPUs and operating systems. Hence, CPUs and operating systems must be appropriately selected and well adapted.

·   Studying and developing a PLC program model for small and medium-sized hydropower units, which enables data uplink and downlink, data preprocessing, time processing, trip matrix processing, power regulation, processing switching and typical process standardization, which could provide a programming basis for small and medium-sized units and improve the safety and reliability of their operation.

·   Studying a serial data acquisition device capable of converting multi-channel data from local devices into a unified data interface to solve the difficulty in gathering information from automation equipment in existing hydropower plant monitoring systems.

·   Having proposed a power regulation method for hydropower stations, which includes initial power regulation; selection of a corresponding power regulation method based on the relationship between acquired data and set values; and at the same time, monitoring of power regulation failures and abnormalities during the power regulation process. This regulation method can be widely applied to the power regulation of hydraulic turbine sets to significantly shorten the time of power regulation and avoid the problem of over-regulation caused by periodic pulse width modulation.

·   Having put forward a state evaluation method for computer monitoring systems at hydropower plants, which determines the stability field of view for quantitative state evaluation indicators, identifies the elasticity of the field of view by quantifying the diversity of state evaluation indicators and of component operating condition data, and obtains the accuracy field of view for quantitative state evaluation indicators by integrating such elasticity into the said association network. In this way, the stability field of view for state evaluation indicators is extended to improve the accuracy of state evaluation of computer monitoring systems at hydropower plants.

·   Having developed a serial data acquisition device based on embedded systems for hydropower station monitoring systems, which can convert multi-channel data from local devices into a unified data interface to solve the difficulty in gathering communication from automation equipment in existing hydropower plant monitoring systems. Having increased the reliability of data transmission by enabling interface conversion through data acquisition, interface and serial modules.

·   Having optimized the design of local LCU cabinets and changed the structure of such cabinets to improve their heat dissipation performance; having improved external input terminals to ensure that the same number of measurement points can be collected within the same space.

The homemade computer monitoring system has been successfully applied to the hydropower plant in Xucun Village. This research is part of the project "Research, Development and Implementation of Homemade Computer Monitoring Systems for Hydropower Stations" (HNKJ21-H19), funded by China Huaneng Group's science and technology project, which is undertaken by Huaneng Lancang River Hydropower Inc. The hydropower plant is of great significance as it is the first project employing Huaneng's homemade computer monitoring system. This project adopts an iP9000 intelligent integrated monitoring platform, a Haiguang x86 processor as the server CPU, a Phytium processor as the PLC CPU, a Uniontech operating system, and a Beidou high-precision clock synchronization system. The project was accepted in July 2021.

On-site Acceptance of the Homemade Computer Monitoring System for Small and Medium-sized Hydropower Stations

Project Acceptance of the Homemade Computer Monitoring System for Small and Medium-sized Hydropower Stations

Patent for invention

Patent for a new type of practical technology

Homemade PLC Program Model