Duke Energy Florida
Duke Energy Florida has an International Drive (I-Drive) system that is a unique distribution system designed to meet the high reliability requirements of customers along International Drive in Orlando, Florida. The system was designed and installed in the 1999-2000 timeframe. The existing system is designed to very quickly isolate faults on the underground cables. The communication system is complex. The system contains 85 relays and each of those relays communicate with two other relays, resulting in over 160 communication channels that are utilized to monitor the integrity of the 12.47 kV cables.
Commonwealth has assisted with the issues on the system that were leading to problems during fault conditions. Commonwealth helped resolve phase rotation issues, loss of voltage issues, battery issues, mirrored bit issues, and port connection issues of the system. The ideal solution for these issues are to alarm SCADA when the issues first arise so they can be addressed and taken care of before a future fault occurs. Commonwealth developed a method to avoid miscommunication and to verify exactly the correct ports and correct relays are communicating to transmit an address along with the protection-related mirrored bits.
Complete documentation of all updates including the As-Left files were included in the final report from Commonwealth for Duke Energy Florida. Logic diagrams were created and provided to understand the functioning of each template. All necessary engineering documentation was created to aid future expansion of the system. All the issues of the system were addressed and resolved successfully.