Robust technique for fast and safe transfer of power plant auxiliaries

Motor bus transfer involves the process of transferring a bus that has several critical motors to an alternate source of power when the main power source feeding them is interrupted. Bus transfer is a time-critical application in which the transfer process depends on various parameters such as the type of motor, load on the motor at the time of transfer, the inertia of the motor, and the combined open-circuit time constant of the various motors present in the bus at the time of transfer. A new high-speed bus-transfer scheme is presented in this paper, which determines the type of bus transfer possible based on the first one cycle of voltage information available from the motor bus after it is interrupted. A new algorithm is proposed to predict the open-circuit time constant of the combined motors within one cycle of interruption of the motor bus. Based on the predicted open-circuit time constant and the alternate source circuit breaker-closing time, the algorithm determines if a high-speed bus transfer is possible for that bus. If a high-speed bus transfer is not possible, the scheme determines effectively the next possible type of bus transfer, which is an in-phase transfer or residual voltage transfer based on user settings. The performance of the scheme for a typical thermal power plant, a cogeneration plant, and a nuclear power plant auxiliary is shown in this paper.