To handle the increasing number of passengers one of the most important airports in Croatia succeeded in a reliable and efficient power supply for the complete network. For this, our external partner Koncar set up a retrofit project which took 4 months during winter season, a time where the airport is frequented by smaller number of passengers.
The power grid of the airport is supplied via two substations whose equipment was old and not fit to balance the energy needs. Furthermore, manual onsite operation was required in case a power failure occurred. Therefore the availability of the local operations team affected the reaction time heavily, with the most pr oblems during holiday seasons.
Configuration at Split Airport, Croatia
To underline the importance of Split airport, Koncar provided a complete solution for the upgrade of the complete power grid. First, the primary switchgear consisting of 2 substations was retrofitted with new equipment. Furthermore, to enable remote control and supervision, Hitachi Energy’s RTU540 with remote input/output (I/O) modules and PLC functions according to IEC 61131 were installed. Measuring power, energy, power factor and frequency as well as power values (W, VA, VAR) within the network are now possible with the newly installed multimeter 560CVD03. The automatic reconfiguration of the power grid was achieved with the implementation of an advanced algorithm.
With this new system and the reliability of power supply the customer is very happy. The remote and local monitoring and control of the substation manual onsite operations are not necessary anymore. Power outages can now be detected on the incoming feeders so that affected areas can be isolated quickly. In addition, fault detection, localization and isolation within the substation enable the airport to adapt quickly to changes to avoid power outages. Thus, in comparison to the old system, the average power outage time could be lowered to less than 3 seconds which contributes significantly to the higher safety of the air traffic.