ABB Drives Keep Canoeists on Course for 2012
The Cardiff International White Water (CIWW) centre is using ABB variable-speed drives (VSDs) to help it maintain the correct flow rates of its artificial river system. The CIWW centre is used for recreational and professional white-water canoeing activities and may be used as a practice centre for the 2012 Olympics. The system therefore needed to be capable of supplying various flow rates of water, corresponding to standards of various participants such as amateur, intermediate and expert.
Owned and operated by Cardiff Council, the facility has four low-harmonic ABB drives, each of 350kW, housed in a motor control centre. The system is designed, supplied and installed by Industrial Automation and Controls (IAC), which also supplied the PLC and SCADA system. The CIWW centre takes water into a reservoir from the River Ely and uses the VSD driven pumps to raise the water from the reservoir through a height of 2m to the course. Each pump can move 4m3 of water a second, giving a total maximum flow of 16m3 a second.
This system of four VSDs provides high flexibility, allowing the centre to maintain standard flow rates by switching in successive pumps. As well as having preset flow rates, corresponding to the maximum pumping rate of each pump, the system can use the variable speed control of the drives to make adjustments via a manual slider. An example is two pumps running, giving a flow rate of 8m3 per second. This can be adjusted down to give a lower rate of 5m3 or 6m3 per second, allowing the course to be adjusted to suit any level of experience. Each of the ABB drives communicates with the system's PLC over a Profibus network.
Level sensors within the course and reservoir feed back data to the PLC, allowing it to calculate and adjust pump speed slightly to maintain the correct flow rates. Each pump is tuned, so that for example, if the motor is running at 450rpm, the system knows the pump is achieving a 3.8m3 per second flow rate. An ABB soft start is also used on the conveyor, which raises the boats from the bottom of the course and drops them into the top pool ready for another descent.
Owned and operated by Cardiff Council, the facility has four low-harmonic ABB drives, each of 350kW, housed in a motor control centre. The system is designed, supplied and installed by Industrial Automation and Controls (IAC), which also supplied the PLC and SCADA system. The CIWW centre takes water into a reservoir from the River Ely and uses the VSD driven pumps to raise the water from the reservoir through a height of 2m to the course. Each pump can move 4m3 of water a second, giving a total maximum flow of 16m3 a second.
This system of four VSDs provides high flexibility, allowing the centre to maintain standard flow rates by switching in successive pumps. As well as having preset flow rates, corresponding to the maximum pumping rate of each pump, the system can use the variable speed control of the drives to make adjustments via a manual slider. An example is two pumps running, giving a flow rate of 8m3 per second. This can be adjusted down to give a lower rate of 5m3 or 6m3 per second, allowing the course to be adjusted to suit any level of experience. Each of the ABB drives communicates with the system's PLC over a Profibus network.
Level sensors within the course and reservoir feed back data to the PLC, allowing it to calculate and adjust pump speed slightly to maintain the correct flow rates. Each pump is tuned, so that for example, if the motor is running at 450rpm, the system knows the pump is achieving a 3.8m3 per second flow rate. An ABB soft start is also used on the conveyor, which raises the boats from the bottom of the course and drops them into the top pool ready for another descent.
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