PV Plant Control, Connection and Protection

iGrid T&D Advantages

• High­ly flex­i­ble, mod­u­lar and scal­able solu­tion, adapt­able to any sys­tem requirements/ net­work topology
• Smooth approval process thanks to exten­sive com­pli­ance and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions for the industry
• Sim­ple & user-friend­ly con­fig­u­ra­tion, oper­a­tion and com­mis­sion­ing
• Unlim­it­ed real-time data stor­age & analy­sis for KPI cal­cu­la­tions, alarms and reports
• Role-based-access-con­trol (RBAC) and IEC 62531 cyber secu­ri­ty mea­sures for 100% safety
• Define auto­mat­ic set-points for dis­patch orders and oth­er automa­tion sequences based on mathematical/logical expres­sions in a sim­ple and user-friend­ly way to react to faults/events and divert­ing KPIs
• Full inter­op­er­abil­i­ty in any PV plant – col­lect data through any pro­to­col (incl. IEC 61850) and map it to IEC60870‑5–104 or DNP3
• Eco­nom­ic effi­cien­cy & plan­ning safe­ty from rely­ing on a full mon­i­tor­ing, con­trol and pro­tec­tion sys­tem from Thytron­ic Group

PV Monitoring and Control

PV plant man­age­ment sys­tems by iGrid T&D are a com­pre­hen­sive, ven­dor-inde­pen­dent and cus­tomiz­able approach to record­ing, pro­cess­ing, ana­lyz­ing and mon­i­tor­ing all data in real-time and gain­ing total con­trol over your solar plant.

Our iCon­trol SCADA for pho­to­volta­ic ener­gy mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol comes with all rec­om­mend­ed fea­tures for advanced and user-friend­ly plant super­vi­sion and allows to con­trol any device (incl. track­ers, invert­ers, IEDs and meters) or oper­a­tion from one sin­gle plat­form.

Thanks to the inte­gra­tion of local weath­er data, the sys­tem can con­tin­u­ous­ly com­pare expect­ed and actu­al gen­er­a­tion per­for­mance. If per­for­mance data falls under user-defined thresholds or any net­work device behaves abnor­mal­ly, the sys­tem trig­gers auto­mat­ic alarms accom­pa­nied by cus­tomiz­able reports, which can be sent via e‑mail or SMS. This allows to direct­ly inform engi­neer­ing staff, who can imme­di­ate­ly fix the prob­lem on site and review relat­ed events by access­ing the pv plant mon­i­tor­ing soft­ware via web brows­er. Per­for­mance mea­sure­ments on all oper­at­ing lev­els allow engi­neers to tar­get areas of poor per­for­mance for fine-tun­ing or recon­fig­u­ra­tion tasks, allow­ing pre­cise main­te­nance beyond the mere replace­ment of faulty equipment.

Imme­di­ate inter­ven­tions fol­low­ing faults and under­per­for­mance alarms are crit­i­cal in order to max­i­mize the plan­t’s gen­er­a­tion out­put and avail­abil­i­ty. In addi­tion to oper­a­tors and engi­neer­ing staff, the pow­er plant con­troller (PPC) itself can also react to irreg­u­lar­i­ties inde­pen­dent­ly by exe­cut­ing automa­tion sequences. These can eas­i­ly be pro­grammed with the inte­grat­ed PLC automa­tion func­tion­al­i­ties (IEC 61131–3) of the iConf tool. 

No hidden losses with versatile & advanced power plant controllers

Just like our soft­ware, our ver­sa­tile, high-per­for­mance hard­ware (iRTU/iGWs) can apply the entire iGrid T&D pro­to­col suite and can thus be a mas­ter to any device con­nect­ed to the PV plant or the grid-inter­fac­ing sub­sta­tion. Using iGrid T&D hard­ware as PV plant con­troller and/or sub­sta­tion RTU is in turn the eas­i­est way to main­tain full ven­dor-inde­pen­dence.

Our cost-sav­ing and secured hard­ware com­bines three dif­fer­ent roles inside of one device:

• PV plant con­troller (PPC), con­trol­ling, col­lect­ing and pro­cess­ing data from all PV plant devices, such as invert­ers, track­ers, string box­es, envi­ron­men­tal sen­sors and meters.
• Smart meter gate­way, map­ping meter­ing sig­nals in DLMS, Mod­bus or IEC60870‑5–102 onto upstream pro­to­cols such as DNP3 to pass the meter­ing data on to con­trol centers/ mas­ter stations.
• Bay con­troller unit, con­trol­ling, col­lect­ing and pro­cess­ing data from all devices that are part of the grid connection/ sub­sta­tion and pro­tec­tion system.

How­ev­er, com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­to­cols are not the only fac­tor to con­sid­er when one is going for max­i­mum flex­bil­i­ty and inde­pen­dence. Our prod­ucts can be ordered with a range of com­mu­ni­ca­tion ports and I/Os to serve dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ca­tion media. For exam­ple, an iRTU can car­ry an embed­ded Eth­er­net switch to con­nect to sev­er­al redun­dant Eth­er­net net­works, sev­er­al ser­i­al ports for ser­i­al IEDs or meters, and a GPRS modem for wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the con­trol center.

Hav­ing every­thing com­bined in one future-ori­ent­ed device saves a lot of time and mon­ey, whilst remote plant loca­tions, com­plex net­works and even­tu­al changes/replacements stop being a cost­ly threat to your invest­ment. Fur­ther pre­ven­tion against finan­cial loss­es can be pro­vid­ed by redun­dant infra­struc­ture. iRTUs/iGWs can be oper­at­ed in hot-stand­by redun­dan­cy modes and sup­port RSTP/PRP/HSR to pro­tect your net­work from all device fail­ures.  

Fur­ther­more, our plant con­trollers are capa­ble of high pre­ci­sion time-syn­chron­za­tion (<1ms) via PTP or NTP and car­ry inter­nal Real-Time Clocks (RTC, 1ppm). This allows to keep on record­ing events with a micro-sec­ond time stamp­ing accu­ra­cy, even when con­nec­tion to the time source (mas­ter­clock) is lost, per­mit­ting to trace fail­ures back meticulously.

Different Devices for Different Demands

We have devel­oped a broad vari­ety of devices and device fam­i­lies with many con­fig­u­ra­tion options to cost-effec­tive solu­tions for any project requirements.

We can also announce the upcom­ing launch of the iRTU­com­pact, a new com­pact device with inte­grat­ed I/Os for gen­er­a­tion and smart meter­ing applications.

PV plant monitoring solution deployed in hundreds of PV plants across Turkey

Monitor and control, comfortably from anywhere with iControl

Once the data has been col­lect­ed and pre-processed by the controller/RTU/Gateway, the iCon­trol SCADA sytem steps in to visi­ual­ize, store, process and ana­lyze the data, which can range from HV/MV para­me­ters in the point of con­nec­tion to string lev­el mea­sure­ments in PV arrays.

Our SCADA can be oper­at­ed as a stand-alone sys­tem or in com­plex net­work topolo­gies, includ­ing redun­dant net­works or client-serv­er archi­tec­tures with mul­ti­ple con­trol sta­tions access­ing one mas­ter SCADA. All the infor­ma­tion col­lect­ed and gen­er­at­ed by iCon­trol can be trans­ferred to third par­ties via OPC or direct­ly stored in an SQL data­base for sys­tem analy­ses, pre­dic­tions and report­ing.

The SCADA can also gen­er­ate cus­tomiz­able reports by istelf, which can be sent auto­mat­i­cal­ly (e.g. via e‑mail and SMS) to main­te­nance teams, plant own­ers or engi­neer­ing depart­ments. In this way, one sys­tem auto­mat­i­cal­ly feeds all par­ties the infor­ma­tion they need to know, from main­te­nance tech­ni­cians to investors. These reports can include com­plete­ly cus­tomiz­able KPIs, such as plant avail­abil­i­ty or per­for­mance ratio (PR), based on all kinds of col­lect­ed data using freely defin­able math­e­mat­i­cal expressions.

The infor­ma­tion can also be accessed in real-time via web brows­er with the iCon­trol web view­er. The web-view­er is specif­i­cal­ly designed for mon­i­tor­ing the plant with­out act­ing on it. It can dis­play all list­ings, charts and schemas and fol­lows all required safe­ty mea­sures against poten­tial threats. So you can view your sys­tem’s per­for­mance from any­where in the world.

Mul­ti­ple user roles can be defined for iCon­trol and the web view­er in order to ensure that only select­ed users are per­mit­ted to exe­cute cer­tain com­mands and access cer­tain infor­ma­tion. In this way, it is also pos­si­ble to sim­pli­fy the nav­i­ga­tion through the SCADA by only dis­play­ing infor­ma­tion and func­tion­al­i­ties the respec­tive user needs. As such, dif­fer­ent KPIs can be shown to dif­fer­ent users and an owner/investor can view all of his plants at once, while the oper­a­tor is lim­it­ed to view­ing plants deployed in the oper­a­tor’s zone.

Our iEventsview­er is a user-friend­ly tool to view all events that have been record­ed at your solar pow­er plant. It allows to fil­ter and sort events, for instance by device, time or pow­er plant. 

iCon­trol also comes with many advanced fea­tures and car­ries all essen­tial func­tion­al­i­ties for its appli­ca­tion in sub­sta­tions, e.g. bus­bar col­or­ing, PLC automa­tion and smart zoom­ing. Check them out here to see how we can not only auto­mate your plant, but also your grid integration.

Powerful communication technology you can trust

We want to keep the oper­a­tion of your PV plant as sim­ple as pos­si­ble with­out renounc­ing advanced func­tion­al­i­ties. For this rea­son, based on our in-field expe­ri­ence, we designed pow­er­ful and flex­i­ble hard­ware for the ener­gy indus­try. Our user-friend­ly hard­ware facil­i­ti­tates smooth imple­men­ta­tions and can be eas­i­ly adjust­ed to your needs with our free & sim­ple iConf tool. 

We are aware of the broad diver­si­ty of com­po­nents a sys­tem con­struc­tor is con­front­ed with. No mat­ter whether it is a mixed PV pow­er plant with dif­fer­ent invert­er types or a het­ero­ge­neous PV sys­tem with invert­ers from dif­fer­ent man­u­fac­tur­ers, with our solu­tions you no longer need to wor­ry about sys­tem topol­o­gy, com­mu­ni­ca­tion media, com­pat­i­bil­i­ty or net­work inef­fi­cien­cies.

We encour­age to set up open and scal­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­work archi­tec­tures, which will allow you to com­fort­ably react to any kind of changes in your PV plan­t’s net­work and replace third par­ty devices at any giv­en time.

Although our devices are already con­fig­urable and ver­sa­tile by design, we also pro­vide fur­ther prod­uct con­fig­u­ra­tions and tai­lored ser­vices upon request.

Smart Metering

As required by many grid oper­a­tors, the data from each of the pow­er plants must be con­cen­trat­ed or con­vert­ed to com­mu­ni­cate with the oper­a­tor’s sec­ond lev­el SCADA/HMI/CC. Our gate­ways and RTUs can­not only func­tion as a con­cen­trate the data of up to 24 meters, but also serve as com­plete com­mu­ni­ca­tion front-end for the entire pow­er plant and grid inte­gra­tion to con­nect to first or sec­ond lev­el SCADAs.

All of our prod­ucts can col­lect meter­ing data in real-time using any com­mon meter­ing pro­to­col such as IEC60870‑5–102, Mod­bus and DLMS. Pri­or to trans­fer­ring this data, the data can be direct­ly processed by the iGW/iRTU using math­e­mat­i­cal or log­i­cal expres­sions, which can be eas­i­ly defined with the user-friend­ly and free iConf tool. The con­nec­tion to the con­trol cen­ters can be estab­lished through any avail­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­work (GPRS, VSAT, ana­log radio, Eth­er­net, etc.) and run on pro­to­cols such as IEC 60870‑5–101/104, IEC 61850, Mod­bus or DNP3.0. 

We hold longterm rela­tion­ships with major meter­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers such as Lan­dis & Gyr, Itron and Cir­cu­tor, allow­ing us to gain expe­ri­ence with their devices all around the world. Our prod­ucts are designed to col­lect all kinds of meter­ing data as for exam­ple billing infor­ma­tion, loss cal­cu­la­tions, pow­er qual­i­ty and gen­er­a­tion trends, just to name a few. 

Don’t let compliance be in your way

Except for the Net­work Code on Require­ments for Gen­er­a­tors (NC, RFG), which stan­dard­izes all grid con­nec­tion require­ments accross Europe, tech­ni­cal require­ments for con­nect­ing pho­to­volta­ic pow­er plants to the trans­mis­sion or dis­tri­b­u­tion grid can vary great­ly by coun­try, region or grid oper­a­tor. This makes it dif­fi­cult for man­u­fac­tur­ers to design their prod­uct for world-wide com­pli­ance. Hav­ing a prob­lem with the approval of cer­tain devices can be very cost­ly due to last-minute changes and sig­nif­i­cant delays in the project deployment.

Thanks to our expe­ri­ences with elec­tri­cal net­works and sub­sta­tions in a vari­ety of indus­tries all around the plan­et, our prod­ucts have been pre­pared for an imm­mense range of high-demand­ing require­ments and stan­dards, guar­an­tee­ing a peace­ful approval process for any project in any coun­try. Our cer­ti­fi­ca­tions range from EMC com­pat­i­bil­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­to­col stan­dards like IEC 61850 to cyber secu­ri­ty means and have been assert­ed by third par­ty cer­ti­fi­ca­tion bod­ies like DNV GL/ KEMA.

Why go for the PV package? 

Aside from the advan­tages that Thytron­ic Group prod­ucts offer indi­vid­u­al­ly, exe­cut­ing the grid con­nec­tion, pro­tec­tion and super­vi­sion project under one umbrel­la brings many pos­i­tive syn­er­gies, spe­cial­ly in terms of coor­di­na­tion and inter­face engi­neer­ing between prod­ucts. The com­pa­nies are in con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion, con­tin­u­ous­ly work­ing togeth­er on sev­er­al projects, while the devices flu­ent­ly com­mu­ni­cate mul­ti­ple stan­dard pro­to­cols through iGrid’s soft­ware core iGComms.

This leads to sign­f­i­cant cost and time sav­ings for the cus­tomer, who also ben­e­fits from:

• A sin­gle con­tract for the entire package
• Cost-effec­tive pro­vi­sion, sup­ply and project management
• A sin­gle point of con­tact for the entire project
• Quick­er start­up, comis­sion­ing and engineering
• Reduced cus­tomer risk

Solution Benefits & Functions