ABB solution will monitor, manage dozens of hydro plants

ABB Network Manager SCADA enables Brookfield Renewable Power to monitor hydropower, wind, and thermal assets via redundant control centers, improving situational awareness, grid reliability, cybersecurity, and NERC CIP compliance across North American smart grid operations.

ABB is supplying a network management solution that will monitor and control 134 renewable energy facilities that provide states and provinces across Canada and the United States with clean, emission-free power.

The solution will enable Brookfield Renewable Power, one of the largest generators of emission-free energy in the Americas, to monitor, control and manage its entire fleet of power generation facilities in North America.

Brookfield Renewable Power operates 132 hydropower plants, one wind farm (one of the largest in Canada) and one thermal power plant in ten states and provinces of the United States and Canada. The plants have a combined generating capacity of more than 3,500 megawatts and are located as far apart as British Columbia in the west, where BC Hydro grid upgrades are underway, New England in the east and Louisiana in the south.

A Brookfield Renewable Power hydro plant in Sault Ste-Marie, Ontario, Canada has an installed capacity of 62MW, and is among 132 hydropower plants the company operates in North America.

An ABB Network Management control system will monitor and manage the entire portfolio.

Based on ABB’s market-leading network management system, Network Manager SCADA, the solution will provide Brookfield Renewable Power with faster and better information on how its numerous and widely dispersed assets are performing, drawing on SCADA for National Grid U.S. experience as well. It will also heighten operator situational awareness – a prerequisite for correct decision making and power system stability.

All 134 facilities will be monitored and controlled by remote from one national and three regional control centers in each country to provide full redundancy and backup if one control center should ever malfunction or shut down.

The solution will also help Brookfield Renewable Power to comply with stringent North American grid reliability standards, where projects like the Hydro One SVC installation help protect the power transmission system from sabotage and unlawful cyber access. Known as critical infrastructure protection (CIP), the mandatory standards are issued by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).

“The Network manager technology and architecture will provide us with the redundancy, flexibility and expansion capabilities that our operations require, as well as helping us to meet NERC CIP requirements. With this project our operators will have better situational awareness and can do their job more efficiently,” says Viggo Lundhild.

Network Manager monitors, controls and operates in real time power transmission and distribution networks, power generation operations, energy trading systems like the ERCOT wholesale market in Texas and smart grid networks.

It is the world’s leading network management system with more than 400 installations worldwide, including initiatives like the Grid Modernization Lab in Canada.

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