Billing and Settlement System for Major Power Plant in Middle East using ELTRIX PASS

Customer: Coal Power Plant & Electricity and Water Authority in the Middle East

Industry: Energy Sector, Power Generation.

Scope: Supply, Engineering, Commissioning of Energy billing and settlement system invoice model software, data concentrator device for field meter data and process data collection and related IT hardware and Infrastructure.

Business Case: The Coal-based Energy Ph1 plant consisted of 4 ultra-critical coal-fired units of 600 MW net generation capacity each, comprising a steam generator, steam turbine, electric generator, and all associated auxiliary equipment. The customer required a Billing Model Software (Settlement System) for invoicing purposes. The model was recommended to have the ability to automatically generate itemized invoices at the end of each billing period, or on-demand by the Generator to the Offtaker and from Offtaker to Generator, following the Model and Invoicing Procedures and other documents including IWPP Code.

It was desired to use the following information and data for the model:

1.Basic measured values (average hourly values) were required for payment calculation from the Metering System.

2.Status of each power unit including auxiliary systems and backup fuel consumption as available from the SCADA system of the plant.

3.Availability notices

4.Dispatch instructions

5.IWPP Code

Proposed Solution: Kalkitech’s proposed solution was based on our proven Eltrix Billing and Settlement software platform, installed at power utilities across the world.

Major Components:

a)Data Acquisition System: Kalkitech’s data concentrator device, called SYNC 3000, was deployed at the power plant network and was used to collect the data from different data sources over various protocols, at the intervals required for the model. This data was sent to Plant settlement system software deployed at the power plant. SYNC 3000 also sent the collected data to Settlement System software installed at Electricity and Water Authority locations. This data was used by Electricity and Water Authority, the offtaker of the Power generated by the plant, to compare the invoices submitted.

1.Energy Meter Data – Collected from metering outstation (BML system) PC over DLMS COSEM through the Data Concentrator Unit and sent the same to the Settlement system software over DLMS.

2.Process Data – Collected over MODBUS from ABB DCS and sent the same to the Settlement system software over DLMS.

3.Weather Station Data- Collected over MODBUS from ACMS System and sent it to Settlement system software over DLMS.

4. Dispatch Instructions and Availability Entry – Manual Entries in the respective Eltrix settlement system software and transfer between plant and Electricity and Water Authority systems over SFTP.

b) Invoice Model: IWPP Code approved by the stakeholders, was modeled into a software application, which was part of the Eltrix Energy Settlement System Software.

 c) Eltrix Energy Settlement System Platform: This was used as the platform that integrates the inputs collected from the field, manual data entries to the invoice model calculations, generate invoices and supporting reports. This platform also has a rich UI that takes inputs from the users and data displays etc. It also provided provision to the offtaker user to compare the inputs collected by the DCU with time stamp and validate the results by cross verifying the invoice outputs generated by the Settlement system at Electricity and Water Authority and the invoice submitted by the plant after generating the same at the plant invoice model application.

Challenges:

• Integration of systems from various vendors and different protocols, getting timely support and access to required information from various parties.
• Design document approval as many stakeholders were involved.
• Extensive FAT, SAT Test scenarios were conducted over 2 months.
• Different levels of financial and system audits were done by industry experts like Deloitte and Tractebel with various scenarios and edge conditions.

Current Status:

• Despite all the challenges we faced during the execution, 2 Units of the Coal Power plant were operational, after completing the UAT witnessed by representatives of the Coal Power Plant and Energy & Water Authority, the model and system audit was conducted by 3rd party auditors. 

Key Benefits:

• An effective tool to maintain energy data in a computerized environment, aid in the energy data administration
• Custom report building.
• Increase productivity by automating the logic and scenarios into the model. 
• Reduce monotonous labor and cycle times.
• Reduce manual intervention wherever possible and hence reduce or eliminate manual errors, minimize expenses.
• Provide the flexibility, scalability, and accuracy necessary to handle various scenarios in a constantly changing tariff structure
• Flexibility to add units whenever it’s required with minimum configuration efforts.